The deadlines for the merger of Bankia and BMN will be accelerated once it has been confirmed there is no interest on the part of other investors. The tie-up is expected to be completed after the summer and will be the starting gun for the next round of sector consolidation.
Eurozone inflation increased above the European Central Bank’s target for the first time in four years, Eurostat’s figures showed on Thursday. Inflation accelerated to 2 % in February from 1.8 % in January. A similar higher rate was last seen in January 2013. Markets expected prices to rise 1.9 %.
The problem loans of the big banks directly under ECB supervision totalled close to 1 trillion euros at end-2015, although they declined to 921 billion in September 2016 (almost 9% of the euro area’s GDP), according to the data disclosed by Vítor Constâncio on February 3. But the problem is that this figure is not distributed homogeneously across the banks.
It was expected Draghi to avoid any discussion of early exit from QE and he did so. The ECB’s president stuck to the December line. “Self sustained”, not “transient” inflation is wanted. Still, things may complicate this spring.
BoAML | The ECB has closed many doors in December. The 2015-16 strategy of monetary policy covering for fiscal loosening to facilitate structural reform has changed.We are back to national governments having to navigate through strained fiscal trajectories, leaving very little room for mistakes. Potential growth prospects are not great, not only in the periphery.
Most observers bet the Draghi would further extend its current asset purchase programme, shoring up confidence in the face of troubled times ahead. Some believed it might reduce the monthly volume, showing its intent to scale down little by little its massive balance sheet.
There was a consensus in the market that the ECB will announce an extension of its current asset-purchase programme and so president Mario Draghi did it by expanding QE more than expected to December 2017. He also committed to do it even longer if needed.”The presence of the ECB on markets will be there for a long time,” he explained.
BoAML | Almost as soon as the Bank of Japan had announced its yield-target strategy, there has been investor interest in whether the ECB could follow the same policy approach soon. In our view, such read-across is not evident, however.
The European Central Bank kept monetary policy unchanged: interest rates on hold and made only its previous broad commitment to run bond-buying for as long as needed, stopping short of a formal extension of quantitative easing, as expected on Thursday. Indeed, the institution didn’t make any adjustments to its quantitative easing program of asset purchases. That program includes monthly purchases of 80 billion euros and is set to run at least…
Money in circulation (M2 in the US, M3 in the Eurozone) is not created by the central bank, but by the private banks when they lend. These loans are the fundamental countepart of M2 and M3. Loans are converted into deposits which provide the liquidity for us to function.