Your grandfather’s clock

BNP Paribas stands out among its European peers as the bank that didn’t. It didn’t lose billions to the subprime-cum-monoline crisis. It didn’t fall prey to the vagaries of adventurous and «unauthorised» traders playing casino with its capital. It didn’t embark on a costly, value-destroying acquisition. France’s largest bank looks so exceptional these days that the mere confirmation that it only wrote down E900m on the subprime crisis last year sent the shares up 2% in early trading in an other...