Are bankers ruffled by the recently disclosed probe of their shipping books by the European Central Bank?
Some may be, but don’t look at Carsten Wiebers, the bank's out-going global head of maritime industries at Germany’s Kfw IPEX-Bank GmbH.
The question came to a panel of four bankers at today’s Marine Money conference in New York from Euronav chief executive Paddy Rodgers, who was moderating the session.
Rodgers referenced the recent press reports of the ECB action and asked whether lenders were concerned to have regulators rummaging through their books.
For Wiebers, however, it sounded like so much old news.
“It’s correct that we are closely scrutinised and have been investigated on a regular basis starting in Germany back in 2008,” Wiebers said.
“Whether it’s the ECB or our domestic regulator, one or the other, their auditors come every six months to thoroughly scrutinise our portfolio. We hand it over, they look and then they go away.
“It’s a process now very well established and it’s fully transparent.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, no one else on the panel — which included DNB’s Kristin Holth, Deutsche Bank’s Klaus Stoltenberg and US-based CIT’s Adam Conrad — rushed to supplement Wiebers’ world-weary remarks.
Wiebers is set to take on a new job at the bank with his role switching to managing director of Aviation and Rail and Holger Apel appointed to head the shipping division. The changes will take effect from September, the bank said in a statement last week.
