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| Headquarters | Paris, France |
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| Established | 18 January 1800 |
| Ownership | 100% owned by French Government[1] |
| Governor | François Villeroy de Galhau |
| Central bank of | France |
| Website | www.banque-france.fr |
The Bank of France (French: Banque de France, the name used by the bank to refer to itself in all English communications) is the member of the Eurosystem for France. It was established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800 as a private-sector corporation with unique public status. It was granted note-issuance monopoly in Paris in 1803 and in the entire country in 1848, issuing the French franc. Long independent from direct political interference, it was brought under government control in 1936 and eventually nationalized in 1945. While other banks of issue were established in the French colonial empire, the Bank of France remained Metropolitan France's sole monetary authority until end-1998, when France adopted the euro as its currency.
The Bank of France long held high prestige as an anchor of financial stability, especially before the monetary turmoil that followed World War I. In 1907, Italian economist and statesman Luigi Luzzatti referred to the Bank of France as "the centre of the world's monetary power."[2]: 21
The French framework for banking supervision was initiated by the Vichy Government in 1941 and entrusted from the start to a separate body under the aegis of the Bank of France, which in 2013 became the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (French acronym ACPR). The ACPR lost its notional autonomy from the Bank of France in 2017.
- ^ Weidner, Jan (2017). "The Organisation and Structure of Central Banks" (PDF). Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek.
- ^ Gianni Toniolo (2005). Central Bank Cooperation at the Bank for International Settlements, 1930-1973. Cambridge University Press.