Santander : A new slowdown in lending to the private sector in September, already contracting in the peripheral countries. The fall in corporate lending in Italy is the largest since the ECB has recorded historical data (2004).
The ECB published, on October 25, data on lending to the private sector in the eurozone, confirming the sharp slowdown in bank credit to +0.3% year-on-year in September against +0.7% in August and a peak of +6.5% in September last year, as a result of the current environment of rate hikes, tighter financing conditions and lower demand.
The fall in September was greater in corporate lending (-0.5pp month-on-month to +0.2%) than in household lending (-0.2pp to +0.8%). In this regard, it should be recalled that in the ECB’s survey of financing conditions published this week, banks expect a further tightening of conditions in corporate lending.
By geography, the core countries still register year-on-year growth in corporate lending, albeit decreasing (+1.4% in Germany and +3.5% in France), in contrast to the -3.4% drop in Spanish lending and, above all, the -6.8% drop in Italian lending (its largest historical fall since the ECB recorded data in 2004). Similarly, lending to households is also positive in Germany (+1.2%) and France (+2.2%), but negative in Spain (-1.9%) and Italy (-0.9%). The exception to this divergence between core and peripheral countries is consumer credit, where the lowest growth rate is in German credit: +0.6%, in contrast to +5.1% in Italian credit and +2.6% at the European level.
