ECB has "comfortable margin" before negative rate hurts lending

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank still has a "comfortable margin" before its negative rate on banks' deposits starts hurting their lending to the euro zone economy, ECB director Benoit Coeure said on Monday. "It seems that so far the negative impact on bank lending has been more than offset by general equilibrium impact," Coeure told an event in Frankfurt "This may not be true eternally, and this may not be true if we were to push the deposit rate much, much lower, but so far it seems that we still have a comfortable margin." (Reporting By Francesco Canepa; Editing by Catherine Evans)