Assessing the financial performance of European banks under stress testing scenarios: a multicriteria approach

The European banking system has been under considerable pressure since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007–2008. Except for the global credit crunch, the European sovereign debt crisis has created additional difficulties. In response to the need for increasing the transparency and stability in the European financial/banking system and identifying weaknesses in banks’ capital structures, EU-wide stress tests have been performed by the European Banking Authority (EBA) on a regular basis since 2010. In this context, the aim of this study is to examine the financial performance of the European banks that have participated in the stress tests of EBA. The analysis takes into account the actual financial data of the banks, on the basis of the Capital, Assets, Management, Earnings, Liquidity framework, as well the results of the stress tests. The evaluation of the banks’ financial strength is performed through a robust multicriteria decision aid classification methodology. The latter is used to distinguish between the banks, which failed to meet the minimum capital requirement conditions imposed by EBA, and the well-capitalized ones.