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Easy money: Mittelstand lending glut sparks credit risk fears

In Germany, every bank wants to lend to the Mittelstand, but demand for credit is modest. As a result, interest rates on loans are falling, and some see a danger of bad lending practices making a comeback. Michael Watt reports

They were the bad old days. Distressed debt funds descended on Germany in 2003 and 2004, drawn by estimates that the country’s banks were sitting on €300 billion in non-performing loans; growth was stagnant; unemployment hit a post-war record in 2005. Behind it all, according to risk managers at the country’s listed commercial banks, was a lending market that made it impossible for them to compete

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The wild world of credit models

The Covid-19 pandemic has induced a kind of schizophrenia in loan-loss models. When the pandemic hit, banks overprovisioned for credit losses on the assumption that the economy would head south. But when government stimulus packages put wads of cash in…

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