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Alpha Bank may not pass the next stress tests, says Morgan Stanley

29 April 2011 / 09:04:20  GRReporter
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The US investment bank Morgan Stanley announced that according to its analysts the Greek Alpha Bank would not pass the next bank stress test, reports the daily Imerisia. This applies to another 4 financial institutions on the continent – the Italian Unicredit, the Portuguese Banco Esprito Santo, the Hungarian Erste Bank and Austria's Raiffeisen. The institution monitors the behaviour of 22 European banks that have difficulties with the upcoming stress tests - 17 of them have proceeded to increase the authorized capital, and 5 have not followed the same procedure. However, Greek analysts recall that Alpha Bank increased its authorized capital by 1 billion euros in 2009. They insist from Morgan Stanley that after the previous stress tests the European banks did increase their authorized capital by 55 billion euros. The U.S. investment bank noted at its last conference that the trend would continue. One third of the investors that consulted the bank said they expect an increase in the authorized capital in the range of 20-30 billion euros in 2011. Three weeks after the conference, the financial institutions on the old continent have increased their capital by a further 23 billion euros.

After the yesterday's statements by the Executive Director of the Institute for Industrial Research Yannis Stournaras that any restructuring of the Greek debt would have disastrous consequences for the local banks, other financial experts share the same view today. The analyst at Standard & Poors Moris Kraemer recalls to Naftemporiki - another economic daily - that only a quarter of the countries with a BB credit rating go to bankruptcy or debt restructuring in some form. On the one hand, he argues that restructuring is not unavoidable, but on the other - warns that global markets would perceive it as failure. However, in his opinion the probability of Greece’s failure has increased in the last 1-2 years.

Paul Rawkins from another major global credit rating agency Fitch, however, thinks that if Greece continues to implement the Memorandum of Financial Stability it would move away from bankruptcy. He stresses before the same newspaper that even Greece reaches its growth rate from the recent past, i.e. 3-4% of the GDP it would again necessitate a budget surplus of around 5-6% to manage to reduce its debt as a percentage of the GDP. The analyst assesses the privatization program worth 50 billion euros by 2015 as positive, but believes that the Greek society is not yet ready for a part of it.

The former representative of the European Commission in Greece from the supervisory Troika Servaas Deroose has finally won the sympathy of the Greek media. And this is because he spoke out against the restructuring of the Greek public debt. In an interview with a Belgian newspaper Deroose said that the recovery of the Greek economy would be painful, but it would lead to budget surpluses of around 5.5% from 2015 to 2020. He said the restructuring is not a solution, since a large part of the Greek public debt is owned by Greek banks and insurance funds.

Tags: Alpha Bank Stress testsGreek crisisForeign debtRestructuringServaas Deroose
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