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A German newspaper has taken the unprecedented step of publishing an interview with Baudouin Prot, chief executive of BNP Paribas, without his answers in response to excessive meddling from the French bank's PR team.

Handelsblatt published a double page spread, complete with photographs of Prot, but printed a sea of white space rather than his answers to the questions posed by journalists Nicole Bastian and Robert Landgraf.

The newspaper took the step after becoming frustrated with BNP Paribas's attempts to edit Prot's answers to the interview about the eurozone crisis. It is believed that the interview took place in early September, but that the worsening debt crisis and financial market turmoil prompted the bank's press team to amend his responses. As the copy deadline loomed on Friday, approval was still some way off.

Handelsblatt prompted the communications team at BNP to create a special microsite on the company's website, containing the interview questions and all the approved answers.  In a terse explanatory note, BNP Paribas wrote: 'The 'incident' that led to the publication of an interview of Baudouin Prot with the questions and no answers is the result of a misunderstanding between the communications department of BNP Paribas and the Handelsblatt. We refuse to enter into polemics, and provide the Handelsblatt to the following answers to its questions.'

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