BNP Paribas did not escape Monday’s broad sell-off of European banking shares. And this in spite of its opportunistic weekend swoop on the Belgian and Luxemburg assets of Fortis, transforming the French bank overnight into the eurozone’s biggest in terms of deposits.

Many of BNP’s rivals would probably grudgingly have to agree that the Belgian deal clinched by the French bank’s chairman Michel Pébéreau and its chief executive Baudouin Prot seems pretty smart. For in theory at least it looks like a dream acquisition – a relative bargain transaction using the bank’s own shares and limiting its cash outlay, cast-iron guarantees from Belgium and Luxemburg, and the presence of these two governments as stable shareholders with every interest to ensure the long-term success of the deal.