Ironically, the one institution upon which the devaluation wrought disaster was the Banque de France. For years an urban myth insisted that it had been French selling of the pound that had set off the debacle. In fact, the Banque had hung on to every penny of its $350 million in sterling deposits. So supportive had it been during the crisis that Clément Moret was later named an honorary Knight Commander in the Order of the British Empire. The Banque de France ended up losing close to $125 million, seven times its equity capital. A normal bank would have been driven under.
