European Banks Stash Extra Cash With Central Bank LONDON - Concerns about Europe's debt crisis are prompting the Continent's banks to safeguard money with the European Central Bank instead of lending capital to each other. Figures released on Friday showed that the central bank had received 455 billion euros, or $578 billion, of overnight deposits from European banks, the highest figure since the euro zone was created in 1999. The news comes as many of the Continent's financial institutions are struggling to meet new regulatory capital requirements by mid-summer. To raise the combined 115 billion euros demanded by the European Banking Authority, some banks had hoped to tap investors for new cash. Many, however, have balked. After announcing Wednesday that it was offering a 43 percent discount on a 7.5 billion rights issue, the share price of the Italian bank Unicredit has fallen a combined 34 percent over the last two days. With certainty about the impact of the debt crisis, banks are opting to stash extra short-term cash with central banks. European financial firms, which received a combined 489 billion euros in loans from the European Central Bank in late December, are able to lend the money back to the central bank at a nominal interest rate of 0.25 percent. That figure, however, is almost 50 percent less than what they could charge other banks for access to the overnight money.