Hypo Real Estate, BNP Paribas, SocGen Hold Most Greek Debt Among EU Banks

Enlarge image

Greece's Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou

Hannelore Foerster/Bloomberg

Hypo Real Estate held 7.9 billion euros ($10 billion) of Greek government bonds in March, the Commission said in a report today, citing data from the EU’s bank stress tests published last month.

Hypo Real Estate held 7.9 billion euros ($10 billion) of Greek government bonds in March, the Commission said in a report today, citing data from the EU’s bank stress tests published last month. Photographer: Hannelore Foerster/Bloomberg

Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding AG and France’s BNP Paribas SA and Societe Generale SA have the biggest holdings of Greek sovereign debt among European Union banks, according to a European Commission report.

Hypo Real Estate held 7.9 billion euros ($10 billion) of Greek government bonds in March, the Commission said in a report today, citing data from the EU’s bank stress tests published last month. BNP Paribas held 5 billion euros of debt and Societe Generale had 4.2 billion euros.

Hypo Real Estate was one of the seven out of 91 EU banks that failed the stress test because they lacked adequate reserves to maintain a Tier 1 capital ratio of at least 6 percent in the event of a recession and sovereign-debt crisis. European banking stocks, including BNP Paribas and Societe Generale, have fallen this year amid concern Greece may default.

“Not only would debt restructuring come at very high costs for Greece, also other euro-area countries would suffer high costs,” the commission said. “French, German and British banks are most exposed in nominal terms, although claims on Greece represent a relatively small fraction of their balance sheets.”

The following is a table of the top 10 banks by gross sovereign exposure to Greece, according to Committee of European Banking Supervisors stress test data, which was compiled by the European Commission. The numbers are in billions of euros.

     Bank                                    Exposure

1    Hypo Real Estate Holding AG             7.9
2    BNP Paribas SA                          5.0
3    Societe Generale SA                     4.2
4    Commerzbank AG                          2.9
5    ING Groep NV                            2.4
6    Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc        2.4
7    Deutsche Bank AG                        1.7
8    Groupe BPCE                             1.5
9    HSBC Holdings Plc                       1.5
10   Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg           1.4

To contact the reporter on this story: Niklas Magnusson in Stockholm at nmagnusson1@bloomberg.net

• Tweet
• More
  • Business Exchange
  • Buzz up!
  • Digg
• Print
• Email