EU bank plan may include aid pledged to bailout states

Reuters
October 23, 2011

A drive to lift bank capital across Europe by up to 110 billion euros ($153 billion) is expected to include the roughly 46 billion euros already pledged to Ireland, Greece and Portugal to help their lenders, EU sources told Reuters.

If over a third of the EU's bank recapitalisation drive, which investors hoped would inject more than 100 billion euros of fresh money, is accounted for under old bailout programmes markets are likely to react with disappointment.

It would effectively shrink the overall package, designed to protect EU banks from the fallout of a Greek default and ease their borrowing difficulties amid a creeping credit freeze, from more than 100 billion euros to something around 60 billion.

It would also rest the burden for EU bank recapitalisation in large part on Spain, Italy and France, which one official said together accounted for roughly 45 percent of the overall shortfall found in recent checks of EU banks by supervisors.

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