ECB bank audit to cover consultants in cash
The European Central Bank and eight national regulators, including the eurozone’s five largest economies, will spend up to €487.7m on fees to external advisers for the comprehensive assessment, a screening of the region’s 128 biggest lenders.
Policy makers hope the exercise will help to restore investors’ confidence in the region’s troubled banking sector. The ECB, which takes charge of banking supervision later this year, has said the assessment is a “necessary first step” for establishing a safer, pan-European banking union.
The probe of banks’ balance sheets is now in its final stages, with the results set to be announced in October. Banks will then have just two weeks to come up with plans to plug any capital holes the regulator finds in their finances.
The biggest spender of the eight banking watchdogs is Germany’s BaFin, which is paying out around €240m on the assessment, according to one person familiar with the process.
Along with the external firms, more than 6,000 ECB and national central bank staff are working full time on the exercise.
Similar exercises have proven helpful in the past, with the US Federal Reserve’s examinations of banks in 2009 widely praised for boosting investor confidence – although that was a simpler project covering just 19 lenders.
Source: ft
