Hello there, welcome to another MLEX podcast. My name's James Panicki. I'm the MLEX Brussels managing editor,

which would suggest at least some oversight of all MLEX journalism undertaken in Brussels.

And one of the biggest stories around Europe recently has been the institutional response to struggling and failing European banks.

Earlier this month, Banco Popular Español was pushed into a forced sale after the European

Central Bank found that it was likely to fail.

This attracted some criticism at the time, and this week came the news that bondholders

of the bank are likely to take legal action against that forced sale.

Now, there's plenty to unpack here, and who better to help us do that than John Riga,

Mlex's chief correspondent for financial services.

Hello, John.

Hello.

Okay, let's take a few steps back.

Italian and Spanish banks are being shut down.

That's the part of the story that we know.

But what's the deal?

What's going on?

Europe has a zombie banks problem. This is considered one of the major things holding back the

economy, is that they have lots of banks, banks all over Europe, no problem with the number of banks.

But when they're financially weak, they don't lend as much. A weak lender does not lend as much

as the politicians want to help sort of revive the

economy. And that's what a zombie bank is, so a bank that exists but doesn't do what a bank

should be doing. Banks across Europe as a whole are holding on to something like one trillion

...