Bank regulator identifies 27bn-pound capital shortfall at five UK banks

The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) said that five of the major eight banks in the UK fell short of their capital requirements at the end of 2012 with a combined shortfall of 27.1bn pounds.This is larger than the £25bn deficit calculated back in March by the Financial Policy Committee. Regulations state that major UK banks and building societies have to hold capital resources equal to at least 7.0% of their risk weight assets by the end of the year.The bank regulator said that the five banks which are failing to meet these standards are: Barclays, Co-operative Bank, Lloyds, Nationwide and RBS. Part-nationalised lenders RBS and Lloyds and Barclays had the biggest capital shortfalls of £13.6bn, £8.6bn and £3.0bn, respectively, accounting for over 93% of the total deficit. All three banks issued statements on Thursday, saying that they are confident of meeting the PRA's target by the year end without the need to fundraise.The Co-op was short by £1.5bn and Nationwide by £0.4bn.The ones which met the requirements are HSBC, Standard Chartered and Santander UK.Before Thursday's release, banks that fell short of the capital rules had identified actions to take this year to cut their collective deficit by £13.7bn. As such, the PRA said that a further £13.4bn of actions - "which include disposals and restructuring" - are still needed to meet the 7.0% target.The PRA said in a statement: "The vast majority of actions are due to be completed by end-2013, but the PRA has allowed some limited flexibility for a small part of these actions to be delivered during the first half of 2014. The PRA will hold firms to these plans, and will require additional actions to be taken if capital to cover the full shortfalls is at risk of not being delivered by any firm."