Stressing the banks

The entire financial journalism world has been scrambling for scoops on upcoming results of European bank stress tests, which policymakers hope will draw a line under talk of a new European banking crisis. On July 16, Reuters delivered. With investors increasingly edgy about the lack of information surrounding the tests, Reuters’ EU sources exclusively delivered the process and time of release — after European markets close on July 16, which could be another recipe for jitters— the key measure of core capital which banks would be judged by and the fact that exposure to sovereign debt risk will be the second indicator in order of importance. That sort of information is dynamite for clients as they prepare to sift through the results from 91 banks which will be released simultaneously on Friday, and for assessing the leaks about individual banks that are already appearing ahead of time. Bloomberg and Dow Jones could summon up no sort of matching story, leaving Reuters as the only game in town.