Europe's banks bleed from Greek debt crisis

[sehwag1830]

Credit Agricole reported a record quarterly net loss of 3.07 billion euros, performing worse than expected from the cost of shrinking its balance sheet and after a 220 million euro charge on its Greek debt.

"We think 2012 is going to still be a tense period," Chifflet said, adding: "We're hoping that our results will be largely better than in 2011.

Europe's banks have already written down billions of euros from losses on Greek government bonds and loans, and a deal agreed this week with its creditors will inflict losses of 74% on bondholders.

"We can't say that the writedowns are over," said Franklin Pichard, director at Barclays France. "Even if some can say that the worst is over, we are only at a new stage in terms of provisioning and not necessarily at the end."

That is because, despite the bond swap deal, bondholders could suffer further hits if Greece's economy fails to recover.

Britain's Royal Bank of Scotland has marked its Greek bonds at a 79% loss -- or 1.1 billion pounds -- for 2011. The state-owned bank posted a fourth quarter loss of nearly 2 billion pounds on Thursday.

Europe's banks bleed from Greek debt crisis

 

[Armand2REP]

The bank write-offs aren't as bad as people think. Greece still has to pay the principle, just at a very low interest rate. The banks really do deserve it for making poor loans.