By Henk Jan Reinders, Dirk Schoenmaker, and Mathijs van Dijk
The severe economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic could threaten financial stability. Since accounting-based methods report loan losses with a delay, this column adopts a real-time, market-based assessment of the impact on corporate loan portfolios. Using European stock market data, it estimates that the market-implied losses for euro area banks could reach over €1 trillion, or, depending on the scenario, 7-43% of available bank capital.