(Reuters) -
Any capital shortfalls that the European Central Bank finds this fall at
Greece's four big banks will be manageable, the head of the country's bank
bailout fund told Sunday's Kathimerini newspaper in an interview.
The results of the stress test will be
published in the second half of October, before the ECB takes on bank
supervision on Nov. 4. "Even if some additional capital needs arise (in
the ECB stress test), I believe they will be manageable," Anastasia
Sakellariou, chief executive of bank rescue fund HFSF, told the paper.
The four banks, which control about 90
percent of the industry, were bailed out by the European Union and
International Monetary Fund, which set aside 50 billion euros ($68 billion) in
bank rescue fund HFSF to clean up the sector after its battering in the
country's sovereign debt crisis.
The four banks have already been through two
rounds of recapitalization after two stress tests by the Bank of Greece, the
country's central bank. National, Piraeus and Alpha are majority-owned by the
HFSF rescue fund.
The HFSF pumped 25.5 billion euros into the
four banks and spent another 14.4 billion euros to wind down others deemed non-viable.
It has a remaining cushion of 11.5 billion euros.
"The economic crisis gave birth to a
new but stable banking system," Sakellariou told the paper, without
forecasting how much extra capital the banks may need after the ECB's scrutiny.
Greece's banking sector is troubled by a
mountain of impaired loans after six years of deep recession and austerity
policies that led to cuts in pay, record unemployment and an increased tax
burden.
Non-performing loans reached 77 billion
euros, or 33.5 percent of bank loan books at the end of the first quarter,
forcing banks to continue to make provisions for bad debt.
(Πηγή: reuters.com)
