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European banks would leave London “in very short order” if Britain voted to exit the European Union, a senior Goldman Sachs executive said in a newspaper interview published on Monday. Michael Sherwood, a vice-chairman at the bank, said the prospect of a British withdrawal was a real worry given Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to hold a referendum on the subject if re-elected in 2015. … Goldman’s Sherwood predicted European banks would quickly relocate if Britain did sever its EU ties. “Forget what we would do. Every European firm would be gone in very short order,” he was quoted as...

A major potential negative catalyst for financials globally is rapidly approaching as 114 banks are on review-for-downgrade by Moody's across 16 countries. Why do we care so much about ratings given their historical credibility?...In Europe, the fun heats up in the next few weeks as first Italian banks (4/16), then Spanish banks (4/23) and then Austrian (4/30) face from 1 to 4 notch downgrades and the potential to lose their short-term (funding-/CP-related) Prime-1 top rating, implicitly raising funding costs (and liquidity concerns) even further.

Let me start by venting a little anger. Recently I read an article which stated that it now looks like almost 30% of the Greek financing will come from the IMF, rather than just a small portion. And since 40% of the IMF is funded by US taxpayers, and that debt will be JUNIOR to current bond holders (if the rumors are true) I can't tell you how outraged that makes me.What that means is that US (and Canadian and British, etc.) tax payers will be giving money to Greece who will use a lot of it to roll over...

New York - As American financial strains have at last begun to show some signs of healing, another risk from the European side of the ocean has become more evident. For some time now, America's friends and associates on the other side of the Atlantic have, as is their habit, enjoyed blaming all problems on America's risky ways. But of late, it has become clear that Europe's own financial wizards have opened their financial institutions to a potentially bigger problem: Eastern European and Asian debt. The losses could even surpass those of the subprime meltdown. Though at present the potential...

Iran's oil minister admitted yesterday that Tehran was having trouble financing oil projects, in a rare acknowledgment of the cost of its nuclear dispute. "Currently, overseas banks and financiers have decreased their co-operation," Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh told Shana, the oil ministry news agency. The statement underlined the impact of de facto financial sanctions on the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' second biggest oil producer. As the controversy over Iran's nuclear programme has escalated, the US has applied pressure on European banks and financial institutions to curb dealings with Tehran. The fact that the UN Security Council could soon impose the...

Banks in the European Union are robbed at a rate of one every 90 minutes, according to a new report that also highlights the increasing brutality of raids. "While the number of robberies of bank branches has generally seen a small rise, some tendencies are more worrying: the violence of certain modus operandi and the means used by the perpetrators," the report by the European Banking Federation (FBE) says. Banks have for many decades grown used to viewing issues such as over-regulation, credit defaults and stock market crashes as the principal risks to their operations. However, the report makes clear...