CORRECTED - French banks in reasonable shape -Strauss-Kahn
PARIS (Reuters) - French banks should emerge from the international financial crisis in relatively good shape, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said on Friday.
"French banks won't emerge too badly. For the time being, no French banks are in great difficulty and I don't think any will be," Strauss-Kahn told Europe 1 radio station. "European banks in general have taken on a fair amount of risk, less than American banks," he added.
France's biggest banks have written down billions of euros of assets in the credit crunch, but have fared better than most Wall Street banks and some European peers.
Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) has booked 2.9 billion euros in writedowns, Natixis (CNAT.PA) has booked 1.22 billion and France's biggest retail bank, Credit Agricole SA (CAGR.PA) wrote down 3.3 billion at Calyon, its investment banking arm.
Strauss-Kahn said losses from the global financial crisis totalled $945 billion.
"It's enormous, enormous ... All the system is freezing up and that is why our forecast for the American economy is quite pessimistic," he said.
The IMF forecasts the U.S. economy will grow just 0.5 percent in 2008 as it yields to the housing slump.
It also recently slashed its forecasts for Europe, predicting the euro zone economy will grow just 1.4 percent this year against 2.6 percent in 2007.
"The Europeans say we are overly pessimistic. I hope they are right, but I'm not sure," Strauss-Kahn said.
(Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Quentin Webb)
