LONDON – The largest European banks should find access to
wholesale funding markets easier in the wake of last week’s results from
the EU bank stress tests, according to Fitch Ratings.
Fitch said the fact that EU bank supervisors had published the
stress test methodology had eased market concerns over the potential
impact of a sovereign debt haircut.
James Longsdon, managing director of financial institutions at
Fitch, said that Europe’s largest banks had passed the tests
‘comfortably’.
“Comfortably enough in fact to ease some of the market’s
concerns…Such banks should be better placed to access funding markets.
The publication of the data and methodology overcame a hurdle the market
wanted to see, this should make access easier in the future”.
Longsdon added that ratings agencies will closely monitor banks’
access to the wholesale funding market.
“The heart of our concerns over the last few months have been that
certain banks in Spain, Portugal and Ireland, Greece have problems
accessing wholesale funding markets, whether that be the term-loan
markets or the short-term markets and this is likely to be the major
ratings focus in the near and immediate term,” he said.
Longsdon said that Fitch was satisfied with the double-dip
recession scenario used by the stress tests.
“The recession scenario is about 3 percentage points worse than
Fitch’s expectations for Eurozone growth over 2010/2011 cumulatively.
This would imply a fairly broad setback for the economic recovery
compared to expectations, especially when you consider the incidence of
double-dip recessions in the past.” he said.
Longsdon also noted that wholesale funding markets had reacted
positively to the tests.
“There have certainly been positive signs (from wholesale funding
markets) over the last day or so.”
–London Bureau; Tel: +442078627492; email: wwilkes@marketnews.com
[TOPICS: MT$$$$,MFX$$$,MFXBO$,MGX$$$,M$X$$$,M$$EC$]
