The governor of the Bank of Greece, Giannis Stournaras, appears reassuring about the resilience of Greek banks in light of the turmoil in the banking sector, with his statement to the German financial newspaper Handelsblatt.

“Greek banks are more resilient than a few years ago and have larger reserves in order to absorb the effects of an economic crisis”, assures Mr Stournaras and adds that the banks have made “significant progress in cleaning up their balance sheets and they have plenty of liquidity thanks to increasing deposits and access to capital markets.”

The governor of the Bank of Greece also points out that in 2022 Greek banks returned to profitability and improved their capital adequacy to levels above regulatory requirements. Their report, according to Mr Stournara, is “almost nil”. As specified in the publication, Greek financial institutions do not hold AT1 securities of Crédit Suisse.

Yiannis Stournaras is still optimistic about the prospect of strengthening the capitalization of Greek banks: “In the future, the convergence of asset quality with the EU average, the improvement of the quality and supply of capital, as well as the sustainability of profits due to increase in transactions, will further strengthen the basic statistics of Greek credit institutions”, the central banker states in this regard.

According to Handelsblatt’s response, there are also no signs of a mass withdrawal of deposits, similar to that of the summer of 2015. “Compared to the situation then, today there is rather laxity among the managers of Greek financial institutions. The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is a special case, they say,” reports the editor.