Sweden’s four biggest banks are well equipped to cope should there be another financial crisis, a health check of Europe’s banks has shown, Radio Sweden reported. Handelsbanken, Swedbank, SEB and Nordea all performed well in the European Banking Authority’s latest stress tests of Europe’s 51 biggest banks. Indeed, Swedbank ranked in second place. Overall, Europe’s banks were largely shown to be capable of withstanding a new economic shock. As expected, the biggest concern was over Italy’s Monte dei Paschi, which has struggled with bad loans. The EU-wide tests were introduced following 2008’s global financial crisis in which some banks required government bailouts. German banks, which have been forced to defend their capital adequacy time and again, accounted for four of the ten banks deemed the worst affected by another crisis. And two of the UK’s biggest banks, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, languished near the bottom of the rankings for capital strength.
