FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Major euro zone banks risk suffering if their financial customers, such as funds, insurance and clearing houses, withdraw deposits or face other difficulties, the European Central Bank warned on Tuesday.

The ECB study looked at the risk of contagion from “shadow finance” or “shadow banking” – which covers both activities carried out by private equity funds , speculative, investment and other money-market funds – to traditional banks and vice versa.

The central bank found that exposure, in terms of both bank assets and liabilities, was concentrated in the euro zone’s top thirteen banks, including its eight globally important banks.

The first risk identified is the withdrawal by “shadow banking” players of their funds – deposits, repurchase agreements – from banks. These sources of liquidity represent 13% of the liabilities of all traditional banks, or even more for large institutions.

Withdrawals could occur if the shadow banking sector itself were hit by outflows or lost confidence in a bank.

On the other hand, if liquidity strains force non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) to sell assets, this could trigger a revaluation of assets held by conventional banks since their portfolios may overlap or correlate, the ECB said.

She adds that difficulties at systemically important banks would also be a source of tension for “shadow banking”.

“If any or a group of these (banks) were to get into trouble, there would likely be substantial ramifications in terms of the ability of a significant portion of the NBFI industry to manage liquidity and market risk,” he said. said the ECB. The latter, which used confidential data obtained as part of its banking supervision role, did not name any company in its report.

The global systemically important banks in the euro zone are BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale, BPCE, Deutsche Bank, ING, Santander and UniCredit.

(Francesco Canepa, Laetitia Volga, edited by Blandine Hénault)

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