Press Release: European Commission and IMF Meet with the Banking Community Active in Hungary

July 22, 2010

Press Release No. 10/301
July 22, 2010

In a regular meeting of the European Bank Coordination Initiative held on July 22, 2010, the European Commission and the IMF informed the banking community active in Hungary about their latest review mission in Hungary.

Representatives from the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund met on Thursday, July 22, 2010 in Brussels, with the parent banks of systemically-important Hungarian financial institutions, as well as the largest domestic bank, OTP. The parent banks are Erste Group Bank, RZB Group, Intesa SanPaolo, KBC Group and Unicredit Group. The meeting was also attended by the Hungarian Ministry for the National Economy, the National Bank of Hungary, the Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority and home country supervisors, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank, the World Bank Group and the European Central Bank.

The purpose of this meeting was to take stock of the macroeconomic situation in Hungary and to inform the parent banks about the outcome of the recent joint EC-IMF review mission, which was not concluded. Participants recalled the importance of the European Bank Coordination ("Vienna") Initiative as a framework for coordination and expressed the expectation that talks on the multilateral economic programs, in particular towards improving the features of the temporary Hungarian financial sector levy, would be resumed shortly.

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