Abstract

Bank B was a French banking conglomerate with a 150-year old history and was the result of a concentration trend that characterized the banking industry as well as an intense external growth strategy conducted for decades. In 2008, the bank faced one of the most dangerous challenges of its existence with the emergence of the Global Subprime crisis. As a reaction, the top management created a new team called DR that was in charge of restructuring the bank’s distressed debt exposures. Cedric Dabout and Patrice Housset successfully contributed to strengthen Bank B’s positions on the structured finance segment after the turbulences. Nevertheless, in Q1 2012, they were in front of a critical situation. The European Sovereign debt crisis and its consequences in Greece were a new life-size stress test for DR. Was the first potentially global and European-born crisis in a position to undermine the positions of the so-called “biggest bank in the world” in terms of assets? The challenge for DR was to address the issues faced by the investment banking division on all its debt exposures and to come up with a strategy that minimizes the risk Bank B is facing regarding those exposures.

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