The relief most of Europe’s banks have shown at having adequate reserves to survive a severe recession has been tempered by confirmation of what many had long argued: German banks’ shipping portfolios are a good deal more strained than they care to acknowledge.
Results of the European Central Bank (ECB)’s “stress tests” on the Eurozone’s 130 banks, published this week, made explicit criticism of the nimble accounting used in Germany in recent years to avoid taking huge write-downs on its banks’ boxship-dominated portfolios.
It
