6.5.2 Other complicating factors

There are two complicating factors. Firstly, some characteristics can, by their very nature, never apply to certain State aid cases. The following example is a good illustration of this. If a bank is nationalised and its shareholders are expropriated without receiving any compensation, then this is a relevant characteristic. The fact that shareholders are expropriated means that there is an (ex ante) “own contribution”, which reduces the need for (ex post) burden sharing measures to be included in the restructuring plan. Assume that Bank A and Bank B are both nationalised and assume further that the shareholders of Bank A receive a compensation for the fact that they are expropriated, and the shareholders of Bank B do not receive such a compensation. So Bank A and Bank B are different in this respect. This difference between Bank A and Bank B justifies a different treatment. Assuming that there are no other differences between Bank A and Bank B, the need for burden-sharing measures would be lower for Bank B, because the shareholders already contributed.

This example illustrates that the fact that expropriated shareholders receive no compensation, is a relevant characteristic of a State aid case. If two banks score differently on this characteristic, then this difference justifies a different treatment. However, the question whether or not the expropriated shareholders receive a compensation can only apply in the context of a nationalisation. This can be illustrated by extending the foregoing example with Bank C.1 Assume that Bank C is supported by State aid measures, but without being nationalised. Then there is no compensation for the shareholders of Bank C, because of the simple fact that they were not expropriated, so there is no need for compensation. On this point, Bank C cannot be compared with Bank A and B.

Secondly, the ‘many-variables approach’ requires that all the data on the characteristics are known. However, this is not always the case, since not all information is publicly available. As explained in section 3.6.4, some data are regarded as confidential. These data are therefore removed from the Commission decisions. Since these data are often of a quantitative nature, the non-visibility of these data hampers a quantitative analysis.