Yves Herman/ReutersShares of Dexia, the large French-Belgian bank, collapsed in recent days. Banking woes prompted a broad market sell-off in Europe on Tuesday.
Europe’s biggest banks may finally be forced to own up to their losses.
While bank executives and government leaders have been reluctant to acknowledge that the hundreds of billions of euros of Greek debt held by financial institutions is worth far less than its face value, they are slowly accepting the grim reality, as investors, clients and lenders grow increasingly wary.
On Tuesday, Deutsche Bank said it would not meet its profit goals for the year, citing investor uncertainty and losses on Greek bond holdings. Government officials are debating dismantling Dexia, the large French-Belgian bank, and warehousing its troubled assets in a bad bank.
The latest woes prompted a broad market sell-off in Europe, hitting banks in France and Germany particularly hard. Wall Street, dragged down early by the problems on the Continent, lifted at the close, after reports that European financial officials were considering ways to shore up the industry.
As Europe’s debt crisis continues to fester, financial firms exposed to troubled sovereign debt face a brutal fallout.
Weaker banks are moving closer to the embrace of their governments. Shares of Dexia — which held more than 21 billion euros of Greek, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese bonds at the end of last year — collapsed in recent days. The situation led the Belgian and French governments, three years after originally bailing out Dexia, to guarantee the bank’s future financing needs.
For stronger banks like Deutsche Bank, the biggest in Germany, the pressure is building to cut costs and raise capital. On Tuesday, Deutsche said that it could no longer meet its 2011 profit target of 10 billion euros, or $13.3 billion. The bank said it would take a loss of 250 million euros on its Greek debt and cut 500 investment banking jobs, most of them outside Germany.
By the numbers, a write-down on Greek debt should be affordable. Some banks have already marked down their holdings to market prices. But several of the biggest holders, including Dexia, Société Générale, BNP Paribas and two German-owned state banks, have resisted admitting that their Greek bonds are worth, at best, 50 percent of their face value. Dexia has 3.4 billion euros on its books while Deutsche Bank holds 1.1 billion euros.
European policy makers are fearful of pushing Greece into default. Regulators want to wait until they can erect a firewall around Italian and Spanish debt and protect the European banks holding the bonds on their balance sheets at near or face value.
“Once you take a write-down on Greek debt for Dexia, this has systemic implications for the French and German banks,” said Karel Lannoo, the chief executive of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. Dexia may be one of the worst-off banks, he said, but “the issue is the same for all banks — it will be the taxpayer that pays for this.”
European policy makers remain deeply divided on how to deal with the shaky banks.
The French government supports an exchange between Greece and bankers, which was negotiated in July as part of a second bailout for Athens.
But Germany has increasingly pushed for the banks to contribute a larger share of Greece’s growing bailout bill. Officials at the German finance ministry argue that the most efficient way to do this is for banks to take a 50 percent loss on their Greek bonds.
Since the private sector deal was forged in July, the prices of Greek bonds in secondary markets have plunged to about 36 percent of face value, from 75 percent. That has put additional pressure on European policy makers to change the terms of the deal. On Monday, Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, who leads a permanent working group of euro zone finance ministers, cited the changing market conditions and added that Europe was discussing “technical revisions” to the exchange.
Analysts point out that the cost of this private sector initiative has increased significantly. As originally planned, Greece was supposed to borrow 35 billion euros to buy the AAA bonds needed to back the new securities created for the debt swap.
But the global rally in high-quality debt has made the bonds pricier. People involved in the deal now say that Greece may need to borrow an extra 12 billion euros.
While the question remains whether taxpayers or financial firms will make up the difference, European authorities may be moving closer to a coordinated effort on the banks.
Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic affairs, told The Financial Times on Tuesday that banks’ capital positions “must be reinforced to provide additional safety margins and thus reduce uncertainty.” He said there was “a sense of urgency,” acknowledging that officials were discussing measures to bolster the banks.
Mr. Rehn’s reported comments appear to be at odds with those of his colleague, Michel Barnier, the European commissioner responsible for financial services. On Tuesday, after a meeting of European Union finance ministers in Luxembourg, Mr. Barnier said that although bank recapitalization was proceeding, there was no need for new measures.
A growing number of economists, and some voices within the International Monetary Fund, argue that banks need to formally acknowledge their losses to restore their credibility.
“It is difficult to see how Greece gets out of this without a write-down of its debt,” said a senior I.M.F. official who refused to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the sensitive issue.
Stephen Castle contributed reporting.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=e071b29ed9abfd7aa34c3f607f722fe9
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