Adam Farkas has recently served as Chairman of the Hungarian Financial Supervisory
Authority. His extensive financial services experience spans from CEO and Board
positions at private sector banks to the Managing Director role at the National
Bank of Hungary. He also served as Board member of the Budapest Stock Exchange
and of the Central Depository and Clearing House.
Mr Farkas studied Economics and obtained his Ph.D. at the Budapest University
of Economic Sciences where he started his career as an Assistant Professor and
where he continues to lecture.
Upon announcement of his election, Adam Farkas said:
I am delighted to have been selected by the Board of Supervisors to serve as
the first Executive Director of the EBA. I am honoured and grateful for the trust
placed in me. I look forward to the demanding challenges and responsibilities
this new role holds for me. If I am confirmed by the European Parliament, I am
committed and dedicated to fulfilling the EBA’s mandate within the new European
supervisory architecture.
The Board of Supervisors also appointed the members of the Banking Stakeholder
Group whose function is to facilitate consultation with stakeholders in all the
areas relevant to the tasks of the Authority. The list of the thirty members composing
the Banking Stakeholder Group, which will meet at least four times a year, will
be published on the EBA’s website following the designated members’ acknowledgement
and acceptance of their appointment.
Finally, the Board of Supervisors also agreed on the set-up of the EBA’s internal
committees and panels and appointed their relative Chairs. Five internal Standing
Committees and one Panel will support the Authority in the execution of its tasks:
the Standing Committee on Regulation and Policy, chaired by David Rozumek (Czech
Republic) and co-chaired by the EBA Director of the Cluster Regulations (to be
appointed); the Standing Committee on Accounting, Reporting and Auditing, chaired
by Didier Elbaum (France); the Standing Committee on Oversight and Practices,
chaired by Fernando Vargas (Spain); the Standing Committee on Operations and IT,
chaired by the EBA Director of the Cluster Operations (to be appointed); the Standing
Committee on Financial Innovation, chaired by Anthony Kruizinga (Netherlands);
and the Review Panel, chaired by Thomas Huertas (EBA Alternate Chair).
Concrete next steps and timeline of the 2011 EU-wide stress test exercise
The EBA’s Board of Supervisors agreed to launch the 2011 EU-wide stress testing
exercise with National Supervisory Authorities on 4 March 2011. The stress test,
which will be conducted on a large number of European banks, involves a series
of detailed technical steps and, as a consequence, will take several months to
run. It will be run against a baseline and an adverse macro economic scenario
in order to assess the solvency of the banks involved in the exercise against
hypothetical adverse economic events. The adverse macro-economic scenario, designed
by the ECB, will incorporate a significant deviation from the baseline forecast
and country-specific shocks on real estate prices, interest rates and sovereigns.
This is in line with the EBA’s micro-prudential objective of analysing institution-specific
prudential soundness
The EBA will provide the banks with details of the scenarios by the end of this
week, after which there will be a period of discussion and feedback. The EBA plans
to publish the macro-economic scenarios along with the sample of banks involved,
on 18 March 2011. The EBA is working with the ESRB and national supervisors to
finalise the details of the methodology for the stress test. In addition, the
EBA continues its dialogue with Member States and EU Authorities regarding the
remedial back stop measures that Member States will put in place to address any
weaknesses that the stress test may reveal. Pending the outcome of these discussions,
the EBA anticipates being able to publish the broad principles of the stress test
methodology in April. Following a vigorous peer review, the EBA will publish the
final results of the exercise in June.
2 March 2011
European Banking Authority
Hungarian Financial Supervisory Authority