Cost of Grexit – Part 2 ECB

European Central Bank (ECB) has the potential to turn into Europe's bad bank, should Greece choose to default and move to the exit.

• ECB has taken up large exposure to Greek bonds via Emergency Lending Facility (ELA), direct intervention, Treasury bills purchase via NCBs. As of now, ECB's exposure to Greece stands largest in the Euro zone as a percentage of GDP. Greek debt now stands more than 175% of GDP.

Loss will be shared based up on ECB's key capital ratio between countries. Since the situation still remains hypothetical, exact loss ratio is hard to determine as there might be negotiations over such as Greece will not be paying its share in the loss.

• An event of such would be heavily detrimental on Euro zone, not only such will trigger temporary yet massive capital flight, drop in confidence, ballooning speculation on who might be next.
  
  
• Moreover many countries in Euro zone might not face up to the cost associated with such event.

Cost through ECB -

• ECB has € 27 billion exposure towards Greek bonds, via bailout program. However actual exposure is much higher considering € 110 billion exposure via ELA facility. ECB has also exposure to Greece in treasury bills via Greek central bank.
  
  
• Top losers once again would be Germany, France, Italy and Spain, due to their higher capital contribution in ECB.