Greece Outside In: Where are Europe's banks most exposed?

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Where are Europe's banks most exposed?

How much sovereign debt do Europe's banks have in each country in the EU?

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How much government debt do Europe's banks own?

As the Eurozone crisis gets more dramatic everyday, we wondered where each bank was most exposed in Europe.

As it is, Cyprus looks set to keep its banks closed until at least Thursday - and will be under strict controls to try to prevent a bank run in the wake of the island's €10bn bailout.

So, which banks own government debt in Cyprus, for example? Or where do the UK's banks own sovereign debt?

The European Banking Authority - set up after the 2008 crash - carried out a major exercise looking at holdings of government debt by banks - and published the results at the end of last year. It measures 'gross exposure' to sovereign debt in each country in the EU - except Greece - at the end of June 2012. The data itself is there to download - albeit with an interactive Excel sheet which works only on PC versions of the spreadsheet package.

It shows where €3.6 trillion of government debt is owned by Europe's banks. It shows, for instance, that Santander has €5.9bn in UK debt, or that Societe General has €1.7bn.

Barclays owned €8.4bn in French government debt in June last year - 10% of its total EU exposure. However the majority, 54.9%, is in UK debt. In fact that rule of mostly investing in your home country's sovereign debt is a common factor.

This is how the data looks:

The full data is below for you to download. What can you do with it?