PARIS – Pressure mounted on President Nicolas Sarkozy to come up with an even stronger recipe to try to shield France's fragile economy from the worldwide financial and economic crisis.
Mr. Sarkozy has been one of the most active European leaders to try to mitigate the effect of the financial crisis. Just this week, he said France would by the end of the year set up a national sovereign wealth fund to invest in struggling French companies.
Yet on Friday, the benchmark CAC40 index dropped again on fears that an upcoming recession would now come crashing on French business, battering corporate earnings. The CAC has fallen 4.1% this week and 43% since the start of the year.
The fall in France's stock market highlights how fast the world-wide market turmoil is hitting even countries that at first appeared relatively unscathed by the financial crisis. French banks have, for example, traditionally been more risk averse than their U.S. and European rivals, keeping large retail operations and limiting their exposure the U.S. sub-prime crisis.
