EU Banks may Need to Sell $4.5 trillion of Assets: IMF

'Govts need to deliver on fiscal tightening and set up single supervisory system to avoid sell-off'

    The International Monetary Fund has said European banks may need to sell as much as $4.5 trillion in assets through 2013 if policy makers fall short of pledges to stem the fiscal crisis, up 18% from its April estimate. Failure to implement fiscal tightening or set up a single supervisory system in the timing agreed could force 58 European Union banks from UniCredit SpA (UCG) to Deutsche Bank to shrink assets, the IMF said. That would hurt credit and crimp growth by 4% next year in Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain — Europe's periphery. "Intensification of the crisis has manifested itself in capital outflows from the periphery to the core at a pace typically associated with currency crises or sudden stops," the IMF wrote in its Global Financial Stability Report released on Wednesday. "Restoring confidence among private investors is paramount for the stabilisation of the euro area." The IMF cut its world growth forecasts on Tuesday and warned of slower expansion if Europe does not address threats to their economies. While the European Central Bank's plan to purchase bonds of debt-burdened countries bought governments time to act, divisions over a banking union and Spain's reluctance to ask for a bailout threaten to boost borrowing costs. The European rescue mechanism and the ECB bond programme "must be regarded by markets as real, not 'virtual' and should be coupled with credible conditionality," Jose Vinals, the director of the IMF's monetary and capitalmarkets department said. 
Asian stocks fell for a third day on Wednesday on global growth concerns, with the MSCI Asia Pacific Index down 0.8% in early trade in Tokyo, led by Japanese shares. In April, the IMF forecast asset sales of $3.8 trillion in a "weak policies scenario". Since then, policy makers' delay in taking decisions to solve the crisis worsened funding pressures while the relief provided by the ECB's programme of unlimited three-year loans faded. Under a baseline scenario that has governments follow up on their commitments, the IMF sees a reduction in bank assets of $2.8 trillion, compared with $2.6 trillion in April.The IMF said that "both Spain and Italy have suffered large-scale capital outflows" in the 12 months through June, with $296 billion and $235 billion, respectively. 
"Unless confidence in the euro area is restored, fragmentation forces are likely to intensify bank deleveraging, restrict lending, add to the economic woes of the periphery, and spill over to the core," the IMF said. So far, the IMF estimates that deleveraging among sample banks has reached more than $600 billion in the year through in June. 
Efforts to raise capital cushions have helped strengthen balance sheets and prevent larger asset sales, it said. Looking at other countries, the report stressed that the US and Japan also face risks to financial stability. — Bloomberg