Banks are suffering this Friday, weighed down by the difficulties of the American SVB Financial Group

Minus 5.14% for Société Générale, minus 4.33% for BNP Paribas, minus 3.35% for Crédit Agricole… Like the French, the shares of European banking groups fell on Friday morning, weighed down by the investors’ concerns after the difficulties encountered by the American bank SVB Financial Group. Elsewhere in Europe, the German bank Deutsche Bank lost 6.95%, the British Barclays 5.04%, the Italian Intesa Sanpaolo 3.24%, and the Swiss UBS more than 4%.

This downward movement was initiated by Wall Street on Thursday, with a fall of 6.20% for Bank of America, 6.18% for Wells Fargo and 4.10% for Citigroup. For the vast majority of analysts, it is linked to the announcements on Wednesday by the SVB Financial Group of a major capital increase of 2.25 billion dollars.

A chain reaction that begins with massive customer withdrawals

A privileged partner of the technology sector, SVB is thus seeking to increase its liquidity to strengthen its balance sheet, weakened by customer withdrawals. Electronic trading on the bank’s title was also suspended on Friday, said the American Stock Exchange Nasdaq, pending a communication from the establishment. The latter fell by more than 60% on Thursday and also hastily sold a $21 billion portfolio of financial securities, which earned him an estimated loss of $1.8 billion.

This “little panic broke out on the subject of bank run “, a chain reaction which begins with massive withdrawals of customers, explains to AFP David Bénamou, director of investments of‘Axiom Alternative Investments. But according to a note from SPI Asset Management analyst Stephen Innes, “the risk of a capital or liquidity incident among the big banks is […] weak “.

Analysts are also observing that this correction comes after a rather prosperous start to the year for banks on the stock market. The vast majority of them have remained in the green since the start of the year.

source site