The head of Raiffeisen Bank International, emerging Europe's third-biggest lender, sees scant danger of having to scale back its balance sheet in the region as it bulks up its capital base, he said. "There is no deleveraging taking place," Chief Executive Herbert Stepic told Reuters on the sidelines on a Euromoney conference on Tuesday.
"What is happening is probably it will come to very slow or no growth of bank assets. But what I am seeing now, also in the last quarter, is that is not coming to a reduction in assets," he said.T he Raiffesien group has said it needs to fill a capital gap of around 2.1 billion euros ($2.7 billion) to meet European regulatory rules calling for major banks to have a core Tier One ratio of 9 percent of risk-weighted assets by mid-2012.
Deleveraging was the last of 20 steps the group is considering to hit the targets, Stepic noted. "We are well on the way to getting by without this 20th point," he said, but added: "We cannot rule out that when it gets down to brass tacks we will have to use this measure given the short timespan.".
Comments
Comments are closed.