Warning eurozone bank dividends could fall below Lehman levels

Eurozone bank dividends are poised to fall below the levels seen after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, as regulators push for lenders to bolster capital.

According to dividend forecasts by Bloomberg, French, Italian and Spanish banks will face the heaviest cuts after troubled Italian bank UniCredit and French bank Societe Generale scrapped their dividend payments for 2011. However, banks outside the eurozone, including the US and Sweden, are likely to keep or increase their payouts after regulators said they did not need to raise more capital. Under new European regulations, lenders are under pressure to raise an additional €115bn of capital by June 2012. It is becoming harder to generate the cash from earnings, which are forecast to s...