Jean-Claude Trichet, governor of the Bank of France, is set to succeed Wim Duisenberg as president of the European Central Bank (ECB), following his acquittal Wednesday afternoon by a Paris court on charges of false accounting.

The charges, which carried a 10-month suspended sentence, related to a banking scandal at Crédit Lyonnais in 1992 and the first half of 1993, when Trichet was director-general of the French treasury.