11.5.2 Has the Commission consistently taken into account this relevant characteristic?

The table in Annex VII gives an overview of the decisions that mention that the bank will improve its risk management. In 42 decisions, risk management issues are mentioned, whilst in 48 decisions (of in total 90 cases), it was not mentioned that the bank would improve risk management.1 How can this be explained? The most probable explanation is that those banks did not have significant risk management problems, so that there would have not been any need to improve the risk management. Furthermore, it should be recalled that a reduction of the bank’s risk profile can also be achieved in other ways.2

The reasoning used in section 11.3.2 to justify the omission to mention the absence of corporate governance measures in the restructuring plan also applies to the current relevant characteristic. If one expects a relevant characteristic to be present, the absence of this characteristic should be justified in the decision. Conversely, if one does not expect the presence of a relevant characteristic, its absence does not necessarily need to be justified in the decision. So this possible explanation is a plausible one. Nonetheless, it does not leave out the possibility that the omission to mention the relevant characteristic is due to an inconsistency (“situation P/O” of the matrix).