European Banks Are Getting Indirect Aid From Energy Backstops
- State liquidity aid is indirectly helping financial firms
- Governments can’t allow failure of energy firms: DBRS
Automated teller machines outside a BNP Paribas SA bank branch in Brussels, Belgium.
Photographer: Cyril Marcilhacy/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
BNP Paribas SA, Commerzbank AG and ING Groep NV are emerging as major indirect beneficiaries of the backstops given by European governments to energy companies, with the aid helping stave off a potential wave of defaults.
Those banks are the only ones to have extended revolving credit lines to all four energy companies that have received state aid, including Germany’s Uniper SE, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Together, a total of about 30 lenders have committed financing worth some 11 billion euros ($11 billion) to the troubled firms.