By Li Hongmei

European banks have a combined capital shortfall of 84 billion euros (US$115 billion), German weekly WirtschaftsWoche reported, citing a new study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Credit Agricole has the deepest capital shortfall at 31.5 billion euros, while Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank have gaps of 19 billion and 7.7 billion, the magazine said in a pre-release of its edition today.

Financial regulators have been pushing banks to hold more capital to weather potential financial headwinds.

It was not clear whether the OECD had looked at the listed entity Credit Agricole SA, which is less well-capitalized than its parent, Credit Agricole Group, an unlisted network of cooperative retail banks, which the Bank of France will regulate in terms of solvency ratios.

Although it used a different method of calculating the shortfalls, the OECD said it saw the European Central Bank would come to the same conclusion later this year in its audit and bank stress tests, the weekly cited the study as saying.

Deutsche Bank said earlier this month that its common equity tier 1 capital ratio was 9.7 percent while its leverage ratio was 3.1 percent as of December 31.

Credit Agricole, which will report fourth-quarter results on February 19, reported a core tier 1 ratio of 9.4 percent as of September 30, while Commerzbank had a core tier 1 ratio of 12.7 percent on that date.