BRUSSELS, March 8: The global credit crisis stemming from the US subprime mortgage woes may last until after summer holidays in Europe, longer than previously thought,

KBC’s chief executive officer, Andre Bergen, was quoted as saying.

Continued falls in prices of collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) and other financial instruments are set to enforce more writedowns at banks in the first quarter of 2008, Bergen told economic daily De Tijd in an interview published on Saturday.

Everyone is anxiously awaiting the results for the first quarter, then they will seek confirmation in the second quarter and then it is summer already, said the chief of the Belgian banking and insurance group.

I fear we will only be able to speak of an eventual recovery after the holidays at the earliest. Bergen had earlier predicted the credit crisis would end around March.

He said the crisis could be looked at in a positive way by many banks.

By adjusting the value of portfolios immediately we are opting for short-term pain and we are not sweating our bad credit over years as the Japanese banks have done, he said.

On Friday, Dutch-Belgian financial group Fortis said its profit halved in the fourth quarter after a 1.5 billion euro ($2.3 billion) subprime write down.

It was the latest among the world’s biggest financial groups to report a loss from exposure to subprime-related debt, which has caused UBS and Credit Suisse in Europe to take billions of euros in write downs.—Reuters