Topic: AUSTRIA - on January 23, 2012 at 3:46:00 PM CET
Vienna 2.0 - Austrian banks
EUROPEAN banks have to raise enough capital to reach a 9% core Tier-1 ratio by June 30th. But they are also under pressure to keep providing credit. That puts west European banks with units in central Europe in a quandary: whether to pull back on lending there to concentrate on home markets.
A withdrawal of this sort would hit the region hard. Credit growth in central Europe depends largely on three Austrian banks—Raiffeisen Bank International, Erste Bank and Bank Austria, owned by Italy’s UniCredit—and a handful of other west European banks (see chart). A bevy of multilateral bigwigs descended on Vienna on January 16th to urge against “excessive and disorderly” deleveraging by lenders to the region.
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