February 1, 2012

Survey of Banks Shows a Sharp Cut in Lending in Europe

By JACK EWING



FRANKFURT — Banks in the euro area cut lending sharply at the end of 2011, according to data published Wednesday, raising concern that Europe was on the verge of a credit crisis that could lead to a deeper recession than expected.


A quarterly survey of commercial banks by the European Central Bank showed a surge in the number of institutions that were becoming more restrictive about who they lent to, because the banks themselves were having trouble raising money and were under pressure from regulators to reduce risk.


The survey, which covered the last three months of 2011, provided more evidence of the harmful effect that the sovereign debt crisis was having on the banking system. It also somewhat validated the European Central Bank policy of providing big emergency loans to euro area banks in an attempt to stave off a full-blown lending drought.


“A credit crunch would tip the euro zone back into a severe recession,” Marie Diron, an economist who advises the consulting firm Ernst & Young, said in a statement.


There is also evidence that the problems in Western Europe are spilling over into the developing economies of Eastern Europe.


For example, lending to Poland from outside the country fell by $12 billion, the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, reported last week. The decline is surprising because Poland’s economy continues to grow briskly. It suggests that hard-pressed West European banks have started withholding resources from their subsidiaries in Eastern Europe.


“It is obvious that we see a deleveraging, a retrenching process unfolding,” Thomas Mirow, the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, said in an interview last week. He said the figures from the Bank for International Settlements showed “this is not just perception but reality.” The reconstruction bank provides credit to support the development of free markets in the former Soviet bloc.


In December, the European Central Bank radically expanded lending to euro area banks, providing 489 billion euros ($643 billion) at 1 percent interest for three years. Previously, the central bank offered loans for no more than about a year. That infusion of cash has been credited with easing the strain of the sovereign debt crisis.


It will offer another round of three-year loans at the end of this month, a move that analysts expect to further guard against a credit crisis. Still, some warned that the situation remained perilous.


“For the sovereign crisis to truly abate, we need to see that governments are able to deliver austerity, and the economies can still grow in the face of it,” Karen Ward, senior global economist at HSBC, wrote in a note to clients. It would be wrong to assume that the central bank lending was “a panacea for the euro zone sovereign crisis,” she wrote.


Banks tightened their lending standards for businesses as well as for individuals, according to the central bank. Of the banks surveyed, 35 percent said they were applying stricter criteria to business loans compared with 16 percent in the previous quarter. Banks also became more reluctant to provide mortgage loans. And they said they expected credit to become more scarce in months to come.


Germany was an exception. Lending there remained steady, according to separate data published Wednesday by the Bundesbank, the German central bank.


One reason banks in the euro area are reluctant to lend is that they have their own problems raising money. About half said they were still having trouble getting access to money markets, the central bank said. Funds in the United States and elsewhere that lend large sums to banks remain wary of the health of many euro area institutions because of their holdings of European government bonds.


The data may be seen as partly confirming complaints by banks that regulator pressure is raising the risk of a credit crisis. The European Banking Authority and national regulators are leaning on banks to increase their reserves and reduce risk. One way for banks to do so is to reduce lending.


A fifth of banks surveyed said that the need to raise their capital reserves had forced them to restrict lending. But twice that many banks said the flagging euro area economy was the main reason for tighter credit standards.