Following up on the post from this morning,"Preparing Resources To Shop For Distress…", I'm releasing the followup t our Distressed Asset Sale Initiative for pro and institutional subscribers (click here to subscribe or upgrade) -  Distressed Sales From EU Sovereigns and Banks V.2.0.

As excerpted:

Update Note - European Bank Deleveraging

In our last report on European Bank Deleveraging in May last year, we had highlighted that the European Banks would be forced to shrink their balance sheet by way of asset-sale, reduction in lending and scale-back of their retail business. We had also mentioned why banks would be required to deleverage, and to what extent European banks have planned their asset sale categorized by:

(1)      Banking Activities (Investment banking, Corporate, Retail)

(2)      Asset Category (Banking, Insurance, Asset Management, etc), and

(3)      Location (Asia, Latin America, EU and North America)

The Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) released by IMF (International Monetary Fund) in April 2012 had estimated that EU banks (a sample of 58 banks in IMF GFSR April 2012) would reduce assets by $2.6 trillion (under the base policies scenario) over the period from Q3 2011 to Q4 2013 (10 quarter estimate).

Actual data for 5 quarters ending Q2 2012 shows that a number of euro area banks have taken steps in the direction to deleverage although the pace of effort has somewhat slowed down after Q1 2012 due to ECB’s efforts to relieve funding pressure on banks. The assets of the sample banks fell by around $600 million from Q2 2011 to Q2 2012 (source: IMF’s GFSR October 2012 report). The period Q4 2011 accounted for a major share of the above decline.

Which banks actively initiated deleveraging?         

A number of large European banks decreased their exposure during Q4 2011 and Q1 2012. The decline was notably the highest in the peripheral euro area, around 12% in Q4 2011 and Q1 2012 combined, compared to the decline in other regions, namely other advanced regions in Europe, emerging Europe, emerging Asia, Latin America and other parts of the world. The chart below shows the percentage decline in exposure of European banks by regions in Q4 2011 and Q1 2012.