On 29 April 2014, the Bank of England ("BoE") released the details of the UK stress test for the eight major UK banks and building societies – Barclays, Co-operative Bank, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide, Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander UK and Standard Chartered. The UK stress test will be run alongside the EU-wide stress test but will add variants to explore vulnerabilities particular to the UK banking system. The Prudential Regulation Authority ("PRA") will require any bank which falls below the UK stress test threshold (4.5% of risk weighted assets to be met with Common Equity Tier 1 capital under stress) to take action. The results of the UK stress test will be published after the results of the EU-wide stress test.

The BoE announcement is available at:

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/news/2014/071.aspx.

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