*NEWSBITES
BERLIN — The euro crisis has infected Europe’s banks, which are depositing billions with the European Central Bank (ECB). Bankers are fearing for their jobs – with good reason.
On Wednesday, French bank BNP Paribas announced it would be cutting some 1,400 jobs. And Italy’s Unicredit, which has been under enormous market pressure for months, is planning to let 6,150 people go by 2015, or some 3% of its workforce. The Milan bank suffered a huge loss of nearly 11 billion euros in the third quarter.
The job cuts are occurring in banks across Europe, not just in the main euro crisis countries. According to the Bloomberg news agency, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is cutting 3.4% of its jobs, the Spanish Intesa Sanpaolo nearly 2%, and the Danske Bank a whopping 9%.
Overall, 100,000 European bankers are set to lose their job based on cuts agreed upon this year. And one look at the third quarter figures indicates that many banks may well increase the number of jobs they plan to slash.
Meanwhile, European supervisory authorities are trying to form a more detailed picture of the extent and distribution of risks, Raimund Röseler, the chief executive director of banking supervision at Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), told the Financial Times Deutschland.
Banks are being called on to disclose how many CDS derivatives they bought and sold so that a better picture may be formed of what and where the risks are.
In comments before the European Parliament in Strasbourg, EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso expressed just how worrying the banking situation is. Europe now faces a “systemic crisis’ requiring not only a stronger commitment to Europe, but further measures to combat the euro crisis – such as Euro Bonds, he explained. Barroso said he was preparing to offer more precise details next week about how Euro Bonds will be laid out.
Read the full story in German by J. Dams, M. Greive and H. Zschäpitz
Photo – king_david_uk
*Newsbites are digest items, not direct translations