Wobble sparks euro fears

Jitters over a Portuguese bank bring back memories of the worst of the eurozone crisis.

Andrew Van Sickle
By
published
in Features

Sliding eurozone markets, fears over the solvency of banks and countries "it feels just like 2012 again", says Raoul Ruparel in Forbes.

Late last week, Banco Espirito Santo (BES), Portugal's biggest bank, saw its share price plunge when it emerged that its parent company, Espirito Santo International (ESI), had failed to pay the interest on some of its debts.

The complicated ownership structure left investors worried about the extent of BES's exposure so they sold first and asked questions later.

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As the mood soured, a Spanish bank shelved a bond auction, while a Greek government bond auction proved less successful than expected. The markets' biggest fear about the eurozone during the crisis that bust banks would in turn bankrupt their national governments had flared up again.

While Portugal's government should be able to cover BES's €920m exposure to ESI if it needs to bail it out, it "could ill afford a widespread bank rescue", reckons Capital Economics. High unemployment and the weak economy also suggest there could be more bank losses to come in future.

Yet by early this week the wobble was over. BES "is far too small to have any systemic impact itself", said Morgan Stanley's Hans Redeker, and the turmoil at the overcomplicated holding company where accounting irregularities have been discovered appears specific to this bank.

700-BES

It also suggests that the European Central Bank's (ECB) year-long audit of bank balance sheets is having a positive impact. The so-called asset quality review, to be published this autumn, is supposed to allay fears that European banks (unlike their UK and US counterparts) are still hiding their losses.

The ECB reportedly told the Portuguese authorities that complex shareholdings "might be the type of thing to fall foul of its review", says Iain Dey in The Sunday Times.

If this is a result of the review, it's good news. Previous audits have been toothless, so a more convincing one would boost confidence in European banks over the long run. But it does imply further jitters in the short term as once-hidden losses see the light of day.

Andrew Van Sickle
Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.

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