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发帖数: 2063 | 1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jul/25/seven-us-banks-collapse
More than 100 banks in the US have now collapsed so far this year after
another seven were taken over by regulators late on Friday – the same day
that seven European banks failed a financial health check.
With rising bad debts tied to commercial and residential mortgages, the
number of US bank failures this year is expected to exceed last year's
figure of 140. The largest of the seven US banks just seized by the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation – which acts as a receiver and protects
depositors – was Crescent Bank and Trust Company in Georgia, with more than
$1bn in assets. In all, the seven failed banks had total assets of $2bn.
In Europe, investors will have a first real chance tomorrow to react to the
results of banking stress tests designed to ease concerns about institutions
' financial strength and exposure to debt-laden countries such as Greece.
Regulators assessed how banks would stand up to a double dip recession and a
sovereign debt crisis. But several analysts questioned whether the tests
were tough enough, since, for example, banks were only required to simulate
losses on sovereign debt held for trading purposes and not on bonds they
might hold to maturity.
Five of the seven institutions that failed the tests were Spanish cajas, or
regional savings banks, with Greece's ATE and Germany's Hypo Real Estate
being the other two.
Christophe Nijdam at research firm AlphaValue said the failure rate was just
8% compared with 53% for tests conducted in America last year, when 10 of
19 banks tested needed to raise about $75bn (£48bn) in new capital.
Research firm CreditSights said it expected a benign market reaction to the
European tests, given the amount of information divulged by individual banks
sector loan losses look to have been adequately factored in. [There was]
better disclosure than we had expected, which allows observers to make
further adjustments to the scenarios if they want to."
Britain's four biggest banks, Barclays, HSBC and the bailed-out Royal Bank
of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, comfortably passed the tests. |
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