We have not so good news today from the European Central Bank…
They recommended to all companies not to distribute cash dividends or make share acquisitions at least until September 2021!!!
Due to the uncertainty that exists from the coronavirus pandemic, the ECB wants banks dividends and purchases of own shares to remain lower than 15% of total profits in 2019-2020 and not higher than 20 points based on the capital adequacy ratio.
Which means that each bank that intends to give a dividend should be strongly profitable and have very large cash funds! Not a very promising condition since most of the European banking system is extremely low on cash funds.
As a market sector, banks had huge share profits after the first covid wave. But it seems like ECB is more interested in protecting the banking sector as a whole than the investors that kept the entire sector afloat and even rising during these difficult times.
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