After years of pain, the Greek economy appears to be on the mend. Over the summer, the government sold its first international bond in three years, rating agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor’s upgraded the sovereign’s credit rating, and the International Monetary Fund approved a conditional loan worth up to $1.6bn.
Greece’s banks are also on the road to recovery. The biggest five have risk-weighted capital adequacy ratios hovering between 15% and 18%, and have significantly improved their profit performance since 2015. Their capital-to-asset ratios (which is similar to Basel’s leverage ratios, except that it relates only to on-balance-sheet items) is another measure of their strength. They all safely exceed the 6.5% global average after increasing their ratios over the past two years.
Alpha Bank, Greece’s second biggest lender, has a capital adequacy ratio of 13.3%. This is topped only by the much-smaller Attica, which posted 14.2%. The 8.52% recorded by National Bank of Greece is the lowest among the country’s leading banks, but is still healthy by global standards. Meanwhile, Eurobank Ergasias and Piraeus upped their ratios to 10.2% and 11.1% respectively.
All data sourced from www.thebankerdatabase.com
