News release: “The European Banking Authority (EBA) today agreed to adopt a benchmark of Core Tier 1 (CT1) against which to assess banks in the 2011 EU-wide stress test. The CT1 benchmark will be set at 5% of risk weighted assets. This CT1 definition will be used solely for the purpose of the EU-wide stress test and refers to specific criteria which will be applied consistently across all countries participating in the exercise. This definition is based on existing EU legislation in the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD). It takes the existing EU definition of Tier 1 net of deductions of participations in financial institutions and it strips out hybrid instruments including existing preference shares. It recognises existing government support measures, which will be identified separately in the results. To ensure a fully harmonised computation by all the banks involved in the exercise, the EBA has mapped the different capital elements of CT1 to the current COREP reporting framework.”