Despite the fact that the Friday’s stress test assessment has put the valuations of European banks as fairly cheap on paper, showing that most of the banks have the requisite capital to survive an economic or market catastrophe, it is highly unlikely that the US-based portfolio managers will scoop them up.

According to the assessment, which has been criticized for not being adequately tough, only seven out of 91 European banks require to strengthen their balance sheets, with 3.5 billion euros ($4.5 billion) altogether, in order to survive another recession – either due to sudden economic decline or a deterioration in the supposedly safe government bonds issued by debtor countries like Greece, Portugal and Spain.

The banks that failed the stress test included Hypo Real Estate, a Munich-based firm that has already been taken over by the government after a bailout; ATEBank in Greece; and five savings banks in Spain.

Meanwhile, a number of banks – including Postbank, the Bonn, Germany-based bigwig publicly traded banks, which is 25 percent owned by Deutsche Bank – managed to just barely pass the test; and are likely to face market pressure to increase reserves.

Noting that the stress test procedure has been invited a comprehensive scrutiny, especially due to the manner in which the tests treated European government debt, Scott Snyder, portfolio manager of the ICON Advisers Europe fund ICSEX.O, said: “To us the bank stress test results came out as a non-event. When you look at the results they didn't look very stressful.”