Greek banks pass stress tests, would only lose 15.5 bln under adverse scenario

Greece’s four biggest banks would lose around 15.5 billion euros worth of their capital by 2020, or 9 percentage points of capital, under an adverse economic scenario, results of a stress test published by the European Central Bank showed on Saturday.

Alpha Bank’s Common Equity Tier 1 ratio (CET1) would drop by 8.56 percentage points to 9.69 percent according the adverse scenario of the test. It would drop by 8.68 percentage points to 6.75 percent for Eurobank, 9.56 percentage points to 6.92 percent for National Bank of Greece and 8.95 percentage points 5.90 percent for Piraeus .

A broader stress test of European banks is due later this year but the ECB decided to bring forward the exercise for Greece as it is due to exit its third bailout programme worth up to 86 billion euros later this year.

As some funds set aside for bank recapitalization remain, officials argued that a quicker stress test was needed in case a capital shortfall was uncovered so Greece still had time to complete any recapitalization before the bailout expires in August.

[Reuters]