Most banks pass first stress test

Britain’s eight biggest banks have undergone the first of the annual stress tests, with two failing to make the grade.

Britain's eight biggest banks have undergone the first of the Prudential Regulation Authority's annual stress tests. Their balance sheets (as of the end of 2013) were tested against a three-year disaster scenario that saw house prices slide 35%; the Bank of England's main interest rate shoot up to 4%, due to rising inflation; GDP slide by 3.5%; and sterling tank by 20%. The Co-op, as expected, failed the test, as its capital was wiped out by the hypothetical crash.

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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.