Europe’s highly-leveraged banking sector

Comparing common equity to total assets, 10 major European banks are leveraged more than 25 to 1 (a ratio of less than 4.0%).  According to The Big Picture, Dexia is the highest at close to 77 times, but the others are:

  • Deutsche Bank
  • Credit Agricole
  • Credit Suisse
  • Commerzbank
  • Barclays
  • ING
  • BNP Paribas
  • Societe Generale
  • UBS.

Using total equity may indicate slightly lower leverage but the results offer some idea as to why the  issue of recapitalizing banks is taking so long to resolve.