Archive - Jul 15, 2011 - Story

The reason we have not been covering this year's iteration of the European stress test closely (and the reason why we will not even mention next year's, if there is a Europe next year) is because it was guaranteed apriori that it would be just as farcical as its original version, and result in glaringly failing institutions in the 91-bank sample tested as "passing." Sure enough, The Independent has just reported that all Irish banks have passed the test "comfortably" - a list that includes such horrors as Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Banks and Irish Life and Permanent Plc, which even Moody's suggested would have to fail to avoid last year's farce when AIB passed only to have to be bailed out two months later. And with that we can close the book on this year's stress test before it is even released.

A week earlier, we presented Moody's proposed take on which banks are at risk of failing Europe's Stress Test version 2 (which is nothing but another huge waste of time), the results of which are due to be announced later today. The event will likely be market moving although we expect it will be at most 3 months before a bank that passed the test fails in spectacular fashion, laying the groundwork for next year's Stress Test part 3: the most stringent of all, and so forth. Below is RanSquawk's comprehensive take on what to expect from today's announcement. "Last years stress test results indicated that despite a modest capital shortfall of EUR 3.5bln, overall, the EU banking system was well capitalised and that there was no major risk stemming from sovereign exposure. However, policy makers suffered a massive credibility blow after Ireland was forced to seek monetary assistance after Irish banks lost access to capital markets following revelations of massive financing gaps which in turn endangered the country itself. As such, this year’s stress tests, which have been carried out on 90 banks, have been designed to be more stringent in nature and should provide market participants with some degree of relief."

A snapshot of the European Morning Briefing covering Stocks, Bonds, FX, etc.
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