Europe’s banks and regulators are at odds about how financial institutions should increase their capital reserves. Authorities want European banks to tap existing shareholders and reduce employee bonuses to find a combined $147 billion to increase their core Tier 1 ratios, a measure of a firm’s ability to weather financial shocks, to 9 percent by June.Citigroup estimates that Europe’s financial institutions, minus the Greek banks, had raised at least 40 billion euros, or $51 billion, as of the fourth quarter of 2011.
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