PIMCO Chief: Europe's Banks Must Be Forced To Recapitalize -FT

The chief executive of the world's largest bond investment fund Pacific Investment Management Co. warned Europe's policy makers Thursday they must force Europe's banks to recapitalize immediately to cope with the euro zone's deepening debt crisis, the Financial Times reports.

"Europe's banks must be forced to recapitalize now," Mohamed El-Erian said in an opinion piece on the newspaper's website.

"There should be no doubt in anyone's mind that what started out as a dislocation in the periphery of the euro zone has now decisively breached the firewalls protecting the outer core and is seriously threatening the inner core. Unless this is countered quickly, European policymakers will find it even harder to catch up with the crisis, let alone get ahead of it," he wrote.

The euro slumped and euro-zone bond yields surged Wednesday after Germany failed to sell all of its bonds at an auction, indicating that investor fears about the euro zone's debt crisis are spreading from peripheral member states to core countries.

"Europe must now go well beyond the steps proposed at the October 26 summit. In addition to specifying higher prudential capital ratios, governments must now bully banks to act immediately. Where private funding is not forthcoming, which should now be the presumption for a growing number of banks, recapitalization must be imposed, in return for fundamental changes in the way financial institutions operate and burdens are shared," he said.

PIMCO is a unit of Allianz SE (ALV.XE).

Full story: http://blogs.ft.com/the-a-list/2011/11/24/europes-banks-must-now-be-forced-to-recapitalise/#axzz1ec4yO6oH

-London bureau, Dow Jones Newswires; [phone]; [e-mail]