IMF warns Europe's banking system poses threat to global financial stability

The eurozone's creaking banking system poses a serious threat to global financial stability, according to the International Monetary Fund, which warned European leaders to accelerate plans to support weak banks and create a banking union.

European banks pick up capital plans

LONDON: European banks are finally getting to work on upgrading their capital buffers, on the back of the regulatory certainty which the European Banking Authority finally granted at the beginning of June.

ECB ready for bond purchases if conditions met: Coeure

HONG KONG: The European Central Bank is ready to buy sovereign bonds of euro zone countries that require assistance and agree to fiscal adjustment programmes, European Central Bank Executive Board member Benoit Coeure said on Wednesday.

Dodd-Frank forces European banks to review U.S. deals

(Reuters) - Some European banks are ordering their brokers to rein in and even quit trading some derivatives with U.S.-based peers in a protest against tough new American rules.

Europe focused on union rather than breaking up banks

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Experts may recommend this week that European banks should separate retail banking from their riskier investment arms to make them safer and soften the impact of financial crises.

Worried Banks Resist Fiscal Union

The seemingly endless series of euro zone crises has European officials pushing for a banking union that would watch over and bind together the currency group’s faltering financial institutions.

ECB to hold the line as euro crisis deepens

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- As the euro crisis moves toward a decisive moment, the European Central Bank is under renewed pressure to stabilize the troubled currency union.

Europe's banks on the brink

LONDON, May 17 (IFR) - The euro zone crisis was in full swing when Jean-Claude Trichet took the podium in Berlin last October 6 for his final press conference as president of the European Central Bank.

IMF warns against big bank deleveraging in Europe

WASHINGTON: Growing pressure on European banks to clean up their books could deeply impact economic growth in the eurozone, the International Monetary Fund warned Wednesday.

ET, the new alien scaring global markets

The United States is coming to be seen as a global threat, acting unilaterally with aggressive new market rules that critics say will hurt U.S. firms, foreign banks, and international markets in one swoop.

Fears mount of cuts in EU bank lending

Rising funding costs for European banks are stoking fears that they could be forced to cut back lending and drag down the already struggling world economy.

The spreads for credit default swaps – essentially the price to insure five-year bonds – have hit all-time highs in the past two weeks for the big French and Italian banks, as well as Spain’s Banco Santander. The index of five-year bank CDS’s is now trading wider than during 2008, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers froze interbank lending and sparked a credit crunch.

Markets' hunt for returns poses financial stability risk

Markets' hunt for higher returns in an environment of low interest rates poses a risk to financial stability, warned Paul Fisher, the Bank of England policymaker.

"Investors know – and must remember – that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and that additional return involves additional risk," said Mr Fisher, the Bank's executive director of markets and a member of its interim Financial Policy Committee.