BANCO COMERCIAL PORTUGUÊS, S.A. 
Yet - seven years after huge bank losses drove some countries to the brink of bankruptcy - investors braced for a grim reckoning this time will be disappointed. The European Central Bank, under pressure from Rome, Berlin and other capitals seeking to protect their recovering patients, is instead likely to temper its judgement.
Earlier tests were carried out by regulators across the European Union and as a result were highly politicised as countries sought to paper over problems in their own banks. The ECB was expected to impose order on the euro zone banks when it starts policing them - but instead has come up against many of the same hurdles, including fierce resistance from countries.
"People should not expect blood on the wall," said one person familiar with ECB thinking.
With the eurozone economy still fragile, there is no money to funnel again into banks. On top of that, tough treatment of them by the ECB could undermine its own efforts to get them lending again.
Instead, the central bank is likely to say most banks have improved since the crisis abated last year, according to people familiar with ECB thinking.
While some lenders will fail the test - deemed to have too little capital with which to cover any losses should another crisis arise - the ECB is likely to conclude that most have been patched up.
The central bank, which said it was 'premature' to comment on the outcome of the tests, is keenly aware, however, that its judgement must not seem too lenient.
It has deep reservations about the way in which some of those banks carried out repairs.
Banks in Portugal, for instance, will use future tax credits to bolster capital, despite ECB warnings. Others elsewhere simply ramped up the value of assets.
And the health checks may be the last chance to dispel the cloud of uncertainty that has long lingered over the sector.
NO ZOMBIES
Nonetheless, the outcome is likely to be a far cry from the cull of zombie banks - those 'open for business' but in fact too weak to lend - that some had hoped for after earlier tests named few failures and even gave a clean bill of health to banks in Ireland that then triggered the country's near bankruptcy.
For Antonio Fatas, a Singapore-based economist with business school Insead, the shift confirms his concerns that the test will provide little meaningful insight.
"We have stretched this process for years. It's not a big surprise that if you give things enough time, they will look better."
Top ECB officials have been preparing investors for what they should expect.
The message is getting through, with many analysts predicting that although some banks could fail on paper - a result that would require them to repair their finances - most of those banks will have already fixed their problems since the test was run.
"A lot has been done in the last year, year and a half," Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, said earlier this week.
"... a significant amount of capital and provisions and writedowns have been undertaken in this last 12 to 15 months. Banks want to be ready to cope," he told the European Parliament.
That tone chimes with what senior officials have been saying privately for months and increasingly publicly in recent weeks.
French central bank governor Christian Noyer recently described expectations that big problems would be uncovered as 'probably exaggerated'.
DISMAY
Inside the ECB, supervisory chief Daniele Nouy has long argued that shutting banks would prove hard, according to people familiar with the matter.
The ECB simply doesn't have the clout to order European countries to close their failing banks and countries will continue to argue hard against it. Governments still rely heavily on banks to buy their debt.
On the upside, the ECB estimates that banks have shored up capital by roughly 100 billion euros since the middle of last year, hoarding profits or selling equity or bonds convertible into equity, for example.
But more than 30 billion euros of capital has been raised using methods that the ECB regards with dismay.
Banks in debt-laden Italy, for instance, will boost capital from next year by marking up the value of their shares in the country's central bank by roughly 7 billion euros.
In Italy, Spain and Portugal, banks will count future tax credits as part of capital, in advance of when they fall due.
Allowing its lenders to use future tax credits risks entangling the country's own economic health with that of its fragile banks, the ECB has warned.
"The tax credit scheme might create an additional debt burden for the state," ECB officials recently cautioned. This could happen if the state paid out tax credits to keep struggling banks afloat.
Meanwhile in Germany, one of its weakest lenders, HSH Nordbank, will count billions of euros of state guarantees as capital although final EU approval has yet to come, three sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters.
Making such allowances muddies the picture, says Guntram Wolf of think tank Bruegel.
"Exceptions are a bad idea," he said. "It's a bad idea for the credibility of the test. Market participants need to know what's behind it."
The ECB is now considering whether to insert qualifiers on its test results – a health warning on its health warning. And some experts expect it to give banks extra time to tidy up their accounts.
But with just weeks to go before the October publication date and every such remark requiring a lengthy tussle with countries, they may run out of time.
"The Europeans have moved so slowly," said Insead's Fatas. "This should have been done when the crisis started."
(Additional reporting by Axel Bugge in Lisbon; Editing by Sophie Walker)
By John O'Donnell
