📰 EBF Morning Brief - Friday 6 March

FROM THE MEDIA

Bloomberg: M&A and leveraged loans take a hit globally

Dealmaking across the world is being hampered by the spread of the coronavirus, grounding global investment bankers and threatening a decade-long boom in mergers and acquisitions, reports Bloomberg. According to Reuters, the virus also has hit Europe’s leveraged loan as opportunistic deals are cancelled, syndications are delayed on underwritten transactions and bankers renegotiate the terms being offering to sponsors on new deals as pricing widens across the board. Read more Reuters

Borsen Zeitung: German views on equivalence

The chairman of the German Banking Association, Andreas Krautscheid talks about the EU equivalence regime in an interview with German financial daily Borsen Zeitung. Although it is the decision of the EU Commission whether providers from third countries are allowed to offer their financial services within the European Union, the perspective of German banks is a different one. Read more (DE)

Bloomberg: EU banks store their sensitive data on US clouds

In a recent Bloomberg survey of Europe’s top banks, 22 of 22 respondents said their primary cloud services are American. The three leading U.S. cloud providers are at the top, though unlike in the broader market. While some lenders say they also work with European cloud companies, it’s usually in a secondary role. The U.S. companies’ servers support the sophisticated numbers crunching for tasks like risk management and increasingly house such sensitive data as borrowers’ personal information, says Bloomberg. Read more

CBR: Cyber attack could trigger a liquidity Crisis - ESRB

Europe’s systemic risk watchdog has warned that a single cyber incident could escalate from operational disruption into a major liquidity crisis across Europe, reports Computer Business Review. Read more

FT: Barnier warns of ‘serious’ differences after Brexit talks

Michel Barnier warned on Thursday of “very, very difficult” areas of disagreement with the UK after the first round of negotiations on the EU’s future relationship with the UK ended in Brussels, says the FT. Read more (€)

MAIN EVENTS today

Coronavirus (COVID-19) update - Meetings and visits at EBF

SRB consultation deadline for its MREL policy under the 2019 Banking Package

AMF conference: Building a European Digital Strategy in Financial Services. EBF Director, Cybersecurity & Innovation Alexandra Maniati attending

For more events check the EBF planning calendar HERE

*All events take place in Brussels unless stated otherwise

FROM THE INSTITUTIONS

Council President Michel gives speech on CMU

Council President, Charles Michel, has given a keynote speech on the international role of the euro at the Centre for European policy Studies. According to him, the essential initiatives for tomorrow include a capital markets union and a better management of the euro area. A true CMU would lead to SMEs being able to better fund their projects and that abundant savings could be better channelled into concrete green or digital investments. Read more

European Parliament: Implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact

The European Parliament has published an in-depth analysis of the implementation of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). It includes a summary of the latest key developments, numbers on key public finance indicators in relation to the current SGP-related Council recommendations and a chronology of recent SGP related analytical and procedural steps. Read more

ECB: Documents that paved the way for the euro released

ECB Archives has released 400 documents that contributed to the drafting of the Delors report, which laid out the roadmap for the creation of the euro. It is the first time that the records, which contain deliberations, submissions and working drafts, are being made available online. Read more

BIS: Challenges of population ageing from a central bank perspective

We seem to be in a new economic context characterised by older and declining populations, radical technological innovations (but not necessarily much higher productivity growth), high debt and low interest rates. All this entails substantial challenges both for macroeconomic policies and for the financial sector. Central banks will need to redefine not only their strategy but also the toolbox to be used when the constraints on their interest rate policy become binding said Mr Pablo Hernández de Cos, Governor of the Bank of Spain and Chair of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, at the International Center for Monetary and Banking Studies (ICMB) in Geneva on 3 March 2020. Read more

EBF MEMBERS IN THE NEWS

Belgium: Instantaneous transfers exceeds the bar of 75 million

One year after its launch, the instant transfer is proving to be increasingly popular.
18 banks process instant transfers, covering more than 90% of all payment accounts in our country. There will be even more in 2020. Read more (FR)

Denmark: Faster payments across Nordic countries have moved closer

In the future, transferring money between banks in the Nordic countries may be a narrow matter. A crucial first step towards the integration of Nordic payments has been taken. The Nordic Payment Council (NPC) has just published new standards that allow banks and payment services within the Nordic region to handle payments in the same formats and subject to the same rules. This puts the Nordic region ahead in terms of easier and faster payments between countries across currencies. Read more (DK)

Croatia: Credit growth with an average return on equity of 9.8%

The second half of 2019 and the very beginning of 2020 brought about an acceleration of retail lending and a slight recovery in corporate lending. Household loan growth, measured by comparing bank balances, exceeded 6% a year. Bad credit portfolio sales are still disturbing the clear picture in bank balances when it comes to corporate loans. Therefore, data on a transaction basis should be observed. They point to a slight recovery in lending activity that has begun to occur in the corporate segment as well. Read more (HR)

The European Banking Federation (EBF) and fTLD Registry Services (fTLD) are partnering to educate the European banking sector about the cybersecurity role .BANK plays in protecting banks against Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams, phishing and spoofing attacks that lead to breaches, identity theft and financial fraud. fTLD administers the .BANK domain and the EBF has served on its Advisory Council since 2013. To learn more about the security benefits of .BANK, visit https://www.register.bank/ebf/ or contact fTLD at EBF@fTLD.com.

ABOUT THE EUROPEAN BANKING FEDERATION

The European Banking Federation is the voice of the European banking sector, bringing together national banking associations. The EBF is committed to a thriving European economy that is underpinned by a stable, secure and inclusive financial ecosystem, and to a flourishing society where financing is available to fund the dreams of citizens, businesses and innovators everywhere.