Top Banks in EU Rush for Safety

LONDON—Top European banks, responding to new regulations and wary of lending, are stashing increasingly large sums of money at central banks around the world in a collective flight to safety.


The eight giant European banks that have disclosed their annual results in recent weeks reported holding a total of about $816 billion in cash and deposits at central banks as of Dec. 31, according to calculations by The Wall Street Journal. That is up 50% from a year earlier, when the same banks were holding roughly $543 billion.

WSJ