Europe’s smaller banks face a long goodbye

While regulators’ attention has focused on those that are too big to fail, the financial institutions in Europe that face the sternest challenge might be those that are too small to get funding from investors. And those at risk could include some sizeable and well-known banks, as Phil Moore reports.

ON A DAY when the share prices of banks such as Barclays and Société Générale were falling by more than 10%, another cri de coeur, from a smallish regional Danish bank, is unlikely to have captured much attention. In mid-August, the chief executive of Denmark’s seventh-largest bank by assets, Spar Nord, was quoted as saying that it was increasingly difficult for banks of its size to access international funding, and would remain so for a while.

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