Efforts by the Bank of England and the European Central Bank to limit the economic damage of the coronavirus pandemic may have failed to calm the markets, but analysts and investors in Europe’s fragile banking sector are quietly optimistic.

Benjie Creelan-Sandford, a bank analyst at Jefferies, and his team wrote in a note on 12 March: “From a wider market perspective, the ECB response was a job half-done… however, from a bank perspective, we do think the ECB has delivered a significant package.”