A German finance ministry spokesman said a deal had been reached to recapitalise a core, healthy bank that will be separate from the bad bank, just days before financial guarantees propping up the bank were set to expire. The German bank rescue fund SoFFin has committed three billion euros as a first step to prop up the bank.
The accord resolved a dispute between its main shareholders, the government and regional lenders over who should pay for a fresh bailout.
The urgency of the talks underscored how the financial and economic crisis is still rumbling through Europe's biggest economy, amid wider concern by credit rating agency Standard & Poor's that banks across the globe are undercapitalised. The move will reportedly give the German government a 49% stake in the Düsseldorf-based lender.
Deal could conflict with EU rules
The deal, however, is likely to meet stiff resistance from the European Commission, which needs to approve such measures. EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes has already demanded a change of ownership to end the WestLB "saga".
Kroes' spokesman said the Commission would take all new or renewed assistance to WestLB into account in its review of state aid. German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the bank's rescue will require closer to five billion euros.
Deal points to a wider shake-up
The deal could be the beginning of a wider shake-up of the banking landscape in Europe's largest economy if Berlin is forced to clean up the mess left by the bank's owners, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and local savings banks.
Banking industry observers have suggested the country's seven independent Landesbank groups could be merged to form two or three big groups, though analysts remain sceptical.
WestLB needs funds because guarantees on some of its toxic assets are set to expire by the end of the month, even as its savings bank owners said they were no longer prepared to shoulder the lender's losses.
"We are not prepared in principle" to make additional funding available for WestLB, Rolf Gerlach, president of the WLSGV savings bank association that holds a 25% stake in the lender, told the Boersen-Zeitung newspaper in an interview.
Since February 2008, WestLB has received 11 billion euros in guarantees from Soffin and the bank's owners to finance its sweeping restructuring programme.
(EurActiv with Reuters.)
