Brussels, 05/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 5 November, the European Banking Authority (EBA) published draft methodology for the stress tests it will carry out on 53 banks in 2016.
These 'stress tests' will start in February 2016 and their results will be published in the third quarter of next year. They will cover 53 European banks, 39 of which are in the eurozone and directly supervised by the ECB in the framework of banking union, or a coverage of 70% of the EU banking sector as of the end of 2014. For the eurozone, the tests will be carried out on ten banks from Germany, six from Spain, six from France, five from Italy, four from the Netherlands, two from Ireland, two from Austria, two from Belgium and one each from Finland and Greece.
This health check will aim to assess the banks' response on the basis of two scenarios: a baseline scenario and a crisis situation. The banks will be tested on their capacity, in both scenarios, to ride out a series of risks: credit risks, including securitisation, counterparty and operational risks.
“No single capital threshold is defined for this exercise as banks will be assessed against relevant supervisory capital ratios under a static balance sheet”, the European authority stated in a press release.
On Tuesday 24 November, the EBA is to publish detailed information on the balance sheets of the largest banking groups of the EU, particularly in terms of capital composition, leverage ratio, weighted-risk assets broken down by type of risk and exposure to sovereign and credit risks. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)