FRANKFURT AM MAIN: European authorities have said Latvian bank PNB Banka will be shut down after determining that nothing could prevent it from failing.
PNB Banka, the sixth largest Latvian bank with 550 million euros (RM 2.5 billion) in assets, “was failing or likely to fail” according to a statement by the European Central Bank (ECB) late Thursday.
The bank has been directly supervised by the ECB since May, and central bank officials decided its amount of available capital had deteriorated “to the point that the bank’s assets were less than its liabilities”.
The ECB then informed Europe’s Single Resolution Board, which in turn determined “that resolution action is not necessary,“ and PNB Banka should be liquidated, an SRB statement said.
“The Latvian bank will be wound up under national law,“ SRB added.
The SRB was created in 2016 to deal with failing eurozone banks by spreading the cost of dismantling them across the zone’s entire banking sector.
Several ailing eurozone banks have thus disappeared, including the sixth biggest Spanish bank, Banco Poular, which was acquired in 2017 by rival Santander.
In Italy, two Venetian banks, Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca, were saved by the government at a cost of billions of euros billed to taxpayers. — AFP
