Financial Regulatory Forum

By Boris Groendahl and Terhi Kinnunen

VIENNA/HELSINKI, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Greece must get its own house in order itself as the European Central Bank cannot bail it out, two ECB policymakers reiterated on Tuesday.

“Greece, being a euro country, is under the regime of euro regulations, and so the main policy approach is of course that they have to solve the problems themselves,” ECB Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said in an interview.

“The ECB have a clear mandate … we have a clear no-bailout clause,” Nowotny said in an interview with FT Alphaville, a blog published by the Financial Times newspaper.

Fellow Governing Council member Erkki Liikanen told Finnish broadcaster YLE: “We wait and trust that Greece will carry out those actions it announced last week.”

“It is very important that we follow the stability pact guidelines and that all countries get their debt under control. Otherwise rates will rise and it will make paying back debt more difficult,” Liikanen said.

By Christian Gutlederer and Peter Maushagen

VIENNA/MUNICH, Dec 14 (Reuters) – Austria nationalised Hypo Group Alpe Adria on Monday to avoid a collapse that could have undermined trust in banks in eastern Europe and cast doubt over Austria’s and Germany’s backing of state-owned lenders.

Austria is taking full control of the ailing bank after a high-stakes gamble over the weekend that soured German-Austrian relations and required interventions by the presidents of the European Central Bank and the Bundesbank to be resolved.

German state bank BayernLB, Austrian insurer Grawe and the Austrian region of Carinthia are to give away their stakes for a nominal amount, while injecting around 1 billion euros ($1.5 billion) of capital, Finance Minister Josef Proell said.