The ECB has released its annual accounts for 2012

  • Held €30.8B euros of Greek govt bonds as of Dec 31
  • ECB declared a net profit of 998M euros in 2012 vs 728M last year
  • €99B in Italian bonds
  • €43.7B in Spanish bonds
  • €13.6B in Irish bonds
  • €21.6B in Portuguese bonds
  • Earned €1.108B via SMP programme, about half from Greek bonds

Profits would have been wiped out many times over if the ECB was forced to take the same haircut on Greek debt as everyone else. My overall impression is that there is a surprisingly large percentage of its holdings in Portugal and Ireland.