, Columnists
Banking's Lost Decade
Europe's banks still bear the scars of the financial crisis.
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It's been a lost decade for investors in the world's banks. For Europe's lenders in particular, the wounds are far from healed.
Just as in the U.S., the region's banks took a battering as markets froze over and losses from toxic loans mounted. While the U.S. moved quickly to recapitalize its lenders and allow them to purge their balance sheets of the worst debt through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Europe didn't. Add in a sovereign debt crisis, an investors remained suspicious about European lenders' balance sheets long after the crisis abated.