Tag Archives: European banks

After facing serious challenges, banks in Europe and the US show signs of recovering. Earnings have been decent this year as a number of headwinds fade.Although third-quarter 2017 earnings results were mixed in Europe, compared with a better season in the US, 2017 is still set to be the first year of consistently decent earnings for banks after several years of disappointing results, especially in Europe. The market has noticed the improvement, and the sector has outperformed in recent...

Preliminary purchasing manager indices from Markit suggest the outlook for the euro area continues to brighten. Growth forecasts for this year are tilted to the upside.The euro area composite PMI eased slightly to 54.3 in January, from 54.4 in December. Importantly, the breakdown by subindices showed that employment rose at its fastest rate since 2008, which bodes well for domestic demand. Overall, PMI indices look consistent with real euro area GDP growth of 0.5% q-o-q in Q1, slightly above...

We think some of the ECB’s critics are missing the point. In particular, we expect TLTRO II to lower bank funding costs, mitigate the adverse consequences of low (negative) rates on bank margins, strengthen the ECB’s forward guidance and improve the transmission of monetary policy. We expect the take-up at all four TLTRO II operations to exceed EUR500bn, of which roughly EUR400bn should be rolled over from TLTRO I. The resulting reduction in terms of the cost of negative rates could be...