Bank News - n°2 - April 2009 - Mazars - Italy

Bank News, the biannual publication on the analysis of economic performance in European Banks came out in October 2008; Lehman Brothers had already collapsed but we could not imagine the shockwave that it would provoke: loss of market confidence, sharp restriction in interbank liquidity, general rise in credit spreads, brutal dislocation of all markets…and in addition the discovery of one of the biggest frauds in history, Bernard Madoff's “Ponzi Scheme” which will cost the financial community nearly 50 billion dollars.
In this deep turmoil, the central banks and the states reacted, injecting necessary liquidity, ensuring the strengthening of equity and in certain cases as with the UK and USA, nationalising certain banks. The accounting regulators reacted urgently to limit the spiral of Fair Value. Regulation as a whole is in a period of introspection and under the aegis of the G20, profound changes are being initiated.

The second semester of 2008 therefore represents a sort of full scale stress test for the banks. Our second issue of Bank News measures these performances in its “European Benchmark” before looking in more detail at certain points of technical analysis.

• mazars_bank_news_2009_04_eng.pdf 1.01 MB