national city bank

Sources: Economist: Cutting It Fine Bloomberg: European Bank Funding Threatened as Basel III Meets Solvency II FT: Banks Endorse Option of Creditor ‘Bail-in’ ; Brussels to Target Bondholders on Bail-outs In many European countries, the maturities of bank debt have shortened dramatically in 2011 compared to 2006, according to data provided by Dealogic. In particular, in countries having sovereign-debt problems such as Greece and Portugal, the maturities of bank debt have fallen more sharply. In other countries such as Spain and Italy, banks also face funding difficulties and have been issuing more short-term bonds or paying higher yields. In the case of Italy, banks pay higher yields on their bonds by 1-1.5 percentage points than banks in France and Germany. Having more short-term funding is worrying because it makes banks vulnerable to a sudden liquidity dry-up in short-term funding markets as it happened during the recent global financial crisis. On the other hand, banks in some count...

Sources: Guardian: Fix Banks to Avoid Eurozone Meltdown, IMF Warns IMF: IMF Calls for Strengthened Policy Response, Stronger Financial Integration to Bolster Europe’s Recovery WSJ: IMF Weighs Extending Greek Repayments Last week, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published the latest Regional Economic Outlook for Europe. The IMF expects that economic growth in Europe will not be fast “but still solid and sustainable.” It estimates that economic growth for Europe will be 2.4 percent and 2.6 percent in 2011 and 2012, respectively. In the case of emerging market economies, they are expected to grow at 4.3 percent both in 2011 and 2012. However, the IMF also warns that sovereign debt problems in Greece, Ireland and Portugal could spread to “the core euro area, and then onwards to emerging Europe,” calling for comprehensive and strong policy actions to restore confidence and fix vulnerabilities in the financial sector and accelerate reform efforts. As banks in other countries in Europe ...