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# The Global Intelligence Files

On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor's web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.

## Re: on German banks and Southern Europe

Released on 2012-09-29 00:00 GMT

Email-ID | 858829
Date | 2011-09-13 05:33:07
From | lena.bell@stratfor.com
To | analysts@stratfor.com
List-Name | analysts@stratfor.com

some thoughts on this below from an excellent finance journo back home:
The biggest French banks have an exposure to Greece estimated at less than
EUR10 billion, while the German banks with the biggest exposures have
about half that. That appears quite manageable.
So why would the Germans be contemplating recapitalising their banks in
the event of a default?
The real concern is that a Greek default would trigger a cascading series
of defaults among the weaker southern European economies. The first wave
would probably impact Ireland and Portugal, but the really disconcerting
scenario is one where Italy and Spain were engulfed.
A UBS analysis of banks' exposures to Greece, Ireland and Portugal still
doesn't point to an unmanageable banking crisis if that were the worst to
occur.
Among the big French banks, BNP Paribas has, UBS estimated earlier this
year, an exposure to Greece's sovereign debt of about EUR5.2 billion and
combined exposures to Greece, Ireland and Portugal of EUR8.2 billion, or
12.3 per cent of its tangible equity base. Societe Generale has a EUR2.8
billion exposure to Greece and a total exposure to the sovereign debts of
the three countries of EUR4.7 billion, or 12.1 per cent of its tangible
equity.
Deutsche Bank, with an exposure to Greece of EUR1.8 billion and a combined
exposure of EUR2.5 billion has only 5.1 per cent of its equity base at
risk, while Commerzbank had EUR3 billion at risk in Greek bonds and a EUR4
billion combined exposure which as of last December represented 38.2 per
cent of its tangible equity. It has since raised equity and/or sold
assets, so presumably the exposure isn't quite as threatening.
If the crisis were to undermine Spain and Italy, however, the impacts
would be far more severe, with UBS estimating that BNP would have almost
50 per cent of its equity base exposed to those economies, Societe
Generale 35 per cent and Credit Agricole 32 per cent. Deutsche Bank does
appear among UBS's top 20 bank exposures to Spanish and Italian government
bonds, but Commerzbank did have an exposure of almost EUR16 billion, or
nearly 150 per cent of its equity base, at the start of this
year. Presumably it is now somewhat lower.
Put the two sets of exposures together and it is apparent that the major
banks in both Germany and France would need to raise capital to fill in
the holes in their balance sheets if there were a wave of defaults.
They probably need to raise capital in any event - a different UBS study
estimated that Deutsche and the three biggest French banks needed to raise
about EUR25 billion between them to achieve core tier one capital adequacy
ratios of 10 per cent - but the prospective sovereign debt domino
scenarios make that even more of an issue.
On 9/12/11 9:01 PM, Michael Wilson wrote:
On 9/12/11 4:45 PM, Benjamin Preisler wrote:
This is the data from the last European-wide stress test of banks. As
you can see German exposure to Southern European government bonds is
somewhere around 60bnEUR. The data is from 12/2010 though and since
German banks have massively sold off Greek and Italian debt especially
(I remember a 9bnEUR figure for Italy alone, no link though). If you
want an indicator of the direction things have been moving check out
to what extent German banks were exposed to Italian bonds alone in the
previous stress test.
In addition to those sovereign bonds, German banks are holding about
12bnEUR worth of assets in Greece, 137bnEUR in Italy, 130bnEUR in
Spain. (I estimated those numbers real quick based on this.) Again,
these numbers are from 12/2010, so one can safely assume that they
have gone down since. (Also keep in mind that Commerzbank effectively
is still (semi-)nationalized.) btw who is buying all this debt
(assuming very cheaply and that Germany selling these down is still at
a loss)
Just to put this into context: The ECB has bought bonds worth 143bnEUR
by now, Ireland received a 85bnEUR bailout, Portugal 78bnEUR, Greece's
two bailouts will total somewhere around 240bnEUR.
Random note, these numbers german to greek exposure right? pale when
you compare them with Spanish or French bank exposure to these in
absolute terms and Greek, Italian and Spanish banks exposure within
their own countries in relative terms.
Ok so what do we take from this? If Germany were to face a bailout,
just purely based on its exposure to greece it wouldnt be that bad,
right? ...it would less than what they have pledged to EFSFII.
So they are worried about the larger fragility of the system. Is
that larger fragility due to say French exposure to Greece and German
exposure to France? In other words direct financial contagion? Or (I
assume more likely) is it due to Northern european exposure to all
southern economies and wanting to make sure they can still raise debt at
affordable levels.
Benjamin Preisler
+216 22 73 23 19
--
Michael Wilson
Director of Watch Officer Group, STRATFOR
michael.wilson@stratfor.com
(512) 744-4300 ex 4112