“Keep a close eye on companies with over 20m-euro debts!”

Doru Lionachescu, managing partner of investment banking adviser Capital Partners, says new spectacular insolvencies are more likely than transactions, in the context where markets are not showing signs of recovery, with many companies being overindebted. "We have to look very carefully at companies with debts of over 20 million euros. Apart from top 10 companies, few can survive in the context where annual interest rates and commissions costs amount to around 10% per year. Strictly mathematically speaking a company with 24 million euros in loans has around 200,000-euro monthly costs with loans alone. How many of them do you think are able to pay the rest of their costs in order to survive?," asks Lionachescu, who has worked for ING, Citibank, and Bancpost over the years.

He says in the two years of crisis banks "bought time, hoping to fill current gaps with future profits, but at some point this chain will break, and some companies will have to go through compulsory execution."