The Single Resolution Board (SRB) is an EU agency that was established in Brussels in 2015 as part of the broader set of reforms known as the banking union. It acts as the bank resolution authority for a subset of banks in the euro area and as the institutional hub of the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM). Resolution is the restructuring of a bank by a resolution authority through the use of resolution tools in order to safeguard public interests, including the continuity of the bank's critical functions and financial stability, at minimal costs to taxpayers.
The SRB was established by the EU Single Resolution Mechanism Regulation of 2014. Its leadership was appointed in December 2014. [1] The Board became operational on 1 January 2015, with full assumption of its resolution authority on 1 January 2016. [2]
Its early development was supported by the European Commission. It moved to its current office on Treurenberg 22 in central Brussels in late 2015.
The initial activity of the SRB was largely about establishing processes and methodologies, particularly in the area of resolution planning.
In June 2017, the SRB took its first decision to take resolution action in the case of Banco Popular Español. In March 2022, the European unit of Sberbank was determined to be failing or likely to fail, in the context of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing EU sanctions against Russian lenders. The SRB decided that Sberbank Europe's Austrian parent entity would go into insolvency, but took resolution action on two subsidiaries in Croatia and Slovenia, which it respectively sold to Hrvatska postanska banka and to Nova Ljubljanska Banka. [3]
The Single Resolution Fund (SRF) was established by the SRM Regulation. Where necessary, it may be used to ensure the efficient application of resolution tools and the exercise of the resolution powers conferred to the SRB by the SRM Regulation. The SRF is composed of contributions from credit institutions and certain investment firms in the 19 participating Member States within the Banking Union. It is being gradually built up during the period until 2023 included, and shall reach the target level of at least 1% of the amount of covered deposits of all credit institutions within the Banking Union by 31 December 2023. [4] By July 2023, the SRF had reached a size of €77.6 billion. [5]
The Board, in a narrow sense, is composed of six members : the SRB Chair, the Vice-Chair and four full-time Board Members. These four full-time Board Members as well as the Vice-Chair are responsible for SRB directorates. [6]
The composition of the Board has been, over time, the following one: [7]
The National Resolution Authorities (NRAs) participate in the SRB's plenary sessions, and in certain circumstances set out in the SRM Regulation, also occasionally in executive sessions. As of January 2024, they were the following: [9]
PJSC Sberbank is a Russian majority state-owned banking and financial services company headquartered in Moscow. As the Russian successor entity of the State Labor Savings Banks System of the USSR, it was called Sberbank of Russia until 2015, and in 2020 further shortened its brand to Sber. Following the termination of its operations in the European Union in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, its international footprint is primarily in the Commonwealth of Independent States.
OTP Bank Group is the largest commercial bank of Hungary and one of the largest independent financial service providers in Central and Eastern Europe, with banking services for private individuals and corporate clients. The OTP Group comprises subsidiaries in the field of insurance, real estate, factoring, leasing and asset management, investment and pension funds. Besides Hungary, OTP Group operates in 11 countries of the region via its subsidiaries: in Albania, in Bulgaria, in Croatia, in Romania, in Serbia, in Slovenia, in Ukraine, in Moldova, in Montenegro, in Russia, and in Uzbekistan.
A bailout is the provision of financial help to a corporation or country which otherwise would be on the brink of bankruptcy. A bailout differs from the term bail-in under which the bondholders or depositors of global systemically important financial institutions (G-SIFIs) are forced to participate in the recapitalization process but taxpayers are not. Some governments also have the power to participate in the insolvency process; for instance, the U.S. government intervened in the General Motors bailout of 2009–2013. A bailout can, but does not necessarily, avoid an insolvency process. The term bailout is maritime in origin and describes the act of removing water from a sinking vessel using a bucket.
AIK Banka is a commercial bank based in Belgrade, Serbia.
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The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) is a European Union financial regulatory agency. It was established in 2011 under Regulation (EU) No 1094/2010.
The economic and monetary union (EMU) of the European Union is a group of policies aimed at converging the economies of member states of the European Union at three stages.
Hrvatska poštanska banka d.d. or HPB is the largest Croatian-owned bank in the country and ranks 5th in Croatia in terms of total assets, worth around EUR 7.046.053 thousands.
FROB, the Spanish Executive Resolution Authority is an entity of the Spanish government that manages the resolution processes of credit institutions and investment firms in their executive phase in Spain.
NLB Group is the largest banking and financial group in Slovenia, with the core of its activity being in Southeast Europe.
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is an agency of the European Union located in Paris.
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The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is an intergovernmental organization located in Luxembourg City, which operates under public international law for all eurozone member states having ratified a special ESM intergovernmental treaty. It was established on 27 September 2012 as a permanent firewall for the eurozone, to safeguard and provide instant access to financial assistance programmes for member states of the eurozone in financial difficulty, with a maximum lending capacity of €500 billion. It has replaced two earlier temporary EU funding programmes: the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM).
The Liikanen Report or "Report of the European Commission’s High-level Expert Group on Bank Structural Reform" is a set of recommendations published in October 2012 by a group of experts led by Erkki Liikanen, governor of the Bank of Finland and ECB council member. On 3 July 2013, by large majority the European Parliament adopted an own initiative report called "Reforming the structure of the EU banking sector" that welcomes structural reform measures at Union level to tackle concerns on Too big to fail banks, that led to the publication of a proposal of Regulation on structural measures improving the resilience of EU credit institutions in January 2014. This proposal was withdrawn in July 2018.
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The Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM) is one of the pillars of the European Union's banking union. The Single Resolution Mechanism entered into force on 19 August 2014 and is directly responsible for the resolution of the entities and groups directly supervised by the European Central Bank as well as other cross-border groups. The centralised decision making is built around the Single Resolution Board (SRB) consisting of a chair, a Vice Chair, four permanent members, and the relevant national resolution authorities.
The European banking union refers to the transfer of responsibility for banking policy from the member state-level to the union-wide level in several EU member states, initiated in 2012 as a response to the 2009 Eurozone crisis. The motivation for the banking union was the fragility of numerous banks in the Eurozone, and the identification of a vicious circle between credit conditions for these banks and the sovereign credit of their respective home countries. In several countries, private debts arising from a property bubble were transferred to the respective sovereign as a result of banking system bailouts and government responses to slowing economies post-bubble. Conversely, weakness in sovereign credit resulted in deterioration of the balance sheet position of the banking sector, not least because of high domestic sovereign exposures of the banks.
Sberbank Europe Group was a banking group headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and owned by Sberbank, a Russian state-controlled company. Sberbank Europe provided financial services to over 780,000 customers in eight countries in Central and Eastern Europe. It was liquidated in early March 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Elke König is a German MBA in Business and auditor. From January 2012, she was president of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin); in December 2014, she became the first Chair of the newly established Single Resolution Board (SRB) of the Single Resolution Mechanism headquartered in Brussels. She served as Chair of the SRB until January 2023, when her second term expired.
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