EBA Regular Use

Dear Mr Alexander Fanta,

Thank you for your message.
We hereby confirm receipt of your request for access to documents.
In accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001, your application will be processed within 15 working days.

This deadline expires on 08/07/2024.

If this deadline needs to be extended, we will inform you in due course.

Please provide us with your email address for correspondence related to your request.

Sincerely,

EBA Legal and Compliance Unit

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EBA Regular Use

Dear Mr Fanta,

We refer to your communication dated 17 June 2024 in which you make a request for access to documents pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 May 2001 regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents.
The European Banking Authority (EBA) strives to be transparent and open to as great an extent as possible.

Please note that we are unable to provide you with the requested documents, as we have not identified any such documents in the possession of the EBA.

The EBA, under the Regulation (EU) No 1093/2010, does not have direct supervisory competences with regard to credit or financial institutions and therefore, the EBA does not review the credit or financial relations between credit institutions and their respective clients.

Consequently, the EBA has not engaged in any communication with the real estate group Signa or its supervisory board members or any other representatives, nor did directly assess specific Signa’s financial situation in 2022 and 2023.

As part of its mandates, the EBA monitors and assesses market developments and potential risks and vulnerabilities in the EU/EEA banking sector. Taking into consideration that the banking sector is exposed to commercial real estate, part of our work is to assess the risks and vulnerabilities of the banking sector towards these exposures. For example, in light of the news about Signa’ insolvency, we examined the individual bank exposures to Signa which are included in the reporting on large exposures. However, this information is limited (based solely on large exposures reporting) and confidential under Article 70 of Regulation (EU) No 1093/2010. It should also be noted that other commercial real estate market participants and related developments have also exhibited financial distress. Signa is just one example, considering the international and cross-border activity of EU/EEA banks.

As part of the EBA activity to monitor risks within the banking sector, the EBA has recently published the Risk Assessment Report, that includes a dedicated section on the risks from Commercial Real Estate (CRE) at the following link: https://www.eba.europa.eu/publications-a.... The inclusion of a special chapter on CRE exposures was linked to the general market developments, particularly in the US and EU. Additionally, the EBA publishes bank-by-bank data annually as part of the EBA transparency exercise, which is published together with the end of the year Risk Assessment Report. The transparency exercise provides aggregate information on banks’ exposures to CRE, but does not include information on banks’ exposures to specific counterparties.

Considering the information provided above, the EBA is unable to process your request as it does not hold any of the documents you have requested.

We trust that the above is of assistance to you,

Sincerely,
EBA Legal and Compliance Unit

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