Brussels, 16/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - In its capacity as single supervisor within the framework of banking union in the eurozone, the ECB on Sunday 15 November instructed the Portuguese bank Novo Banco, which rose in 2014 from the ashes of the bailout of Banco Espirito Santo (BES), to plug a capital gap of €1.4 billion.
Novo Banco, which incorporates the healthy assets of BES, has two weeks to present a recapitalisation plan and nine months to bring it to fruition. This is a considerable challenge for Portugal, which is suffering from a degree of political instability, while the Portuguese authorities have already injected nearly €5 billion into the rescue of the country's third-largest bank (see EUROPE 11138).
This decision comes as part of a health check carried out on nine European banks. Five of them (Belgium's Banque Degroof, VTB Bank and Sberbank Europe of Austria, the Slovenian bank Unicredit and Portugal's Novo Banco) have been under the direct supervision of the ECB since the end of 2014 and four others (AFD of France, Luxembourg's JP Morgan, Malta's Medifin Holding and Kuntarahoitus Oyj of Finland) will be from 2016.
Following analysis of the quality of the bank assets, on top of which came a stress test, the ECB identified €138 million of additional own funds requirements for Sberbank, €103 million for VTB, €96 million for AFD and €6 million for Medifin. According to the ECB, these banks do not need to take any particular measures, as their capital deficit has already been plugged. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)