Daragh Maher, a senior currency strategist at HSBC, told the BBC that France was probably more "twitchy" because numbers were showing its competitiveness to be declining.

BBC: Euro rises as finance ministers meet

Goldman Sachs' Jernej Omahen has "Buy" ratings on Spain's BBVA, Britain's HSBC, Italy's Unicredit and France's BNP, with predicted upsides of 45% or more for all four banks.

FORBES: International Investing

France, however, kept copies of the data on the HSBC account holders and returned other copies to HSBC on Mar. 3, according to the bank.

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