Fresh stress tests for EU banks

EU finance ministers have agreed the broad outlines of a fresh round of stress tests on major European financial institutions.

The reviews will be much more thorough-going than the stress tests of key banks last year, an exercise that at the time was cheered as robust by policymakers but yet failed to foresee any crisis in the Irish banking sector.

The latter development prompted the EU to undertake its second sovereign bail-out since the start of the eurozone debt crisis.

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