‘Greek banks won’t need further recapitalisation’

Fulfilment of capital plans have eliminated any need for it, says ECB official

ATHENS: There is no reason to believe that Greek banks will need further recapitalisation, after the latest round provided them with 14.4 billion euros of funding, the head of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) supervisory agency was quoted as saying on Saturday.

“The capital plans have been fulfilled, so there is no need for additional capital requirements. We are in good shape in that respect,” Daniele Nouy, who chairs the Single Supervisory Mechanism, told the Greek newspaper Agora.

Nouy said Greek banks would be excluded from the ECB’s stress tests this year, since they had already gone through “rigorous” health check last year.

The ECB carried out an asset-quality review and stress tests of the four biggest Greek banks in October, after they were weakened by political instability, a loss of deposits and the imposition of capital controls in July, which remain in force.

She called on the banks to use “all available tools” to tackle bad loans, including selling them. “All possibilities should be examined as we have a wide variety of situations,” she said.

The Bank of Greece, which supervises a 9.5 billion-euro ($10.68 billion) portfolio of 14 bad banks after a wave a consolidation, has so far managed to recover 800 million euros of low-quality loans.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 14^th, 2016.

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