- Reuters
Analysis-Europe's debt collectors face reckoning as bad loans vanish
Europe's debt collectors have gone from feast to famine amid a collapse in the number of bank loans turning sour. Companies that recover unpaid bank debts, and which thrived in the aftermath of the euro zone sovereign debt crisis, are rethinking their business models and examining tie-ups with rivals after COVID-19, an energy crisis and two-decade-high interest rates failed to unleash a new wave of loan defaults. Banks in Europe's south have largely completed the clean-ups that once fed the bad loan bonanza and pulled in overseas investment firms such as Apollo, Cerberus, PIMCO, Elliott and Lone Star, while government support measures have helped keep companies and households on their feet.
