FRANKFURT, June 13 (Reuters) – Euro zone banks are sitting on relatively modest amounts of unrealised losses related to sharply higher interest rates, the European Central Bank’s top supervisor said on Tuesday, unveiling the results of a special information request from lenders.

A mountain of unrealised losses led in part to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the United States earlier this year and many U.S. regional lenders also failed to adjust the value of their holdings to reflect rate hikes.

“For all the banks under the supervision of the ECB, the overall amount of unrealised losses is pretty contained,” Andrea Enria said. “It is in the ballpark of 70 billion (euros).”

“If you compare with what U.S. authorities have disclosed recently … that was north of 620 billion,” Enria said.

The ECB has raised rates by a combined 375 basis points over the past year and further hikes are still likely as policymakers hope to arrest runaway inflation.

While this will raise margins for banks, it will lower the value of some government bond holdings and could also reduce some borrowers’ ability to service their debt.

Enria also said that this year’s stress test of the bloc’s lenders will include an exceptionally negative scenario for the economy, with a large impact on stock prices and real estate valuations.

“It’s the harshest (scenario) on record that we have in the in the European Union,” Enria said.

Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.