BNP Paribas, which helped signal the global credit crisis that started one year ago this week, has emerged from the credit crunch as France's healthiest bank, Bloomberg News reported Monday.

BNP Paribas will announce Q2 financial results this week. While earnings are expected to be lower year-over-year, they will probably be better than those of its rivals, Societe Generale SA and Credit Agricole SA, according to Bloomberg. BNP Paribas fell 1.76 euros to 59.77 euros in Monday afternoon trading in Paris.

About a year ago, on August 9, 2007, BNP Paribas halted withdrawals from three funds that invested in subprime mortgage debt. The bank's announcement proved to be the first of dozens credit-loss and write-down announcements by banks, mortgage lenders and other institutional investors, as subprime assets went bad, due to defaults by subprime mortgage payers.

The losses and resulting credit crunch compelled the intervention by the world's major central banks. The U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of England, Swiss National Bank and Bank of Canada made hundreds of billions of dollars available in specialized loans through conventional monetary policy tools and via new, special 'facilities,' in an effort to maintain credit market liquidity and prevent bad bank/mortgage lender business models from undermining healthy sectors and the broader economies in the United States and the European Union.

Economic growth is the major concern today

London-based economist Mark Chandler told BloggingStocks Monday that concern about credit markets freezing up again has diminished, but concern about the impact of the housing sector's slowdown on broader economies has not.