Cyprus Banks Like Iceland’s Dwarf Economy as Clients Pay
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The European Union’s decision to force Cypriot savers into a bailout came after banks grew so large that they dwarfed the nation’s economy, resembling Iceland’s finance industry before its collapse.
Cyprus’s bank assets swelled to 126.4 billion euros ($164 billion) at the end of January, seven times the size of the 18 billion-euro economy, from 78 billion euros in 2007, data from the European Central Bank and the EU’s statistics office show.