Dexia, a Belgian-French financial entity, is rarely in the news anymore. The company is no longer listed on the stock exchange and has little news to report. Its main task is to make itself redundant by completely reducing its balance sheet, without any additional costs for its shareholders, which mainly consist of the Belgian and French governments.
Despite its low profile, Dexia's operations remain supported by Brussels, Paris and Luxembourg (because of the former Luxembourg branch) through state guarantees for the obligations of the former sofaThe size of these guarantees is considerable; on Friday, the three countries still guaranteed 29,72 billion euros, of which 15,6 billion euros for Belgium.
However, the total of state guarantees fell below the 30 billion euro threshold for the first time this month. This is a big difference with the peak of over 90 billion euros in May 2009, shortly after the major banking crisis of 2007-2008, when Dexia first needed government support. At the end of 2011, Dexia ended up in its second major crisis and the company fell apart.
It remains to be seen whether the lower state guarantees reflect a further shrinking of the group's balance sheet. Dexia has not yet announced its 2024 results.