Europe's banks will get the results of a key health check on Sunday and some executives are already managing expectations about the outcome of the "stress tests".

"This is fairly critical information," says Richard Thompson, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers. "Surprises aren't good for the market. The more the banks have done to manage the market, the better."

The tests, orchestrated by the European Banking Authority and aimed at measuring how well lenders can weather differing degrees of economic downturn, are based on the accounts of 123 banks at the end of 2013 plus a summary of capital raised until 30 September.

The results of a separate review of the quality of 130 banks' assets by the European Central Bank will also be announced on Sunday.

Many executives are looking to pre-empt surprises ahead of the results.

At the recent International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington, European bank executives were busy briefing investors ahead of the results, according to people in attendance.

Some Italian bank executives argued that investors are eager to pump equity into Italian institutions with capital shortfalls; French bankers complained that the tests were flawed; the chief executives of two German lenders were overheard teasing one another about whose bank would flunk, these people said.

Several banks could have less than flattering results, but few are expected to fail the tests, analysts say.

Small banks in Germany and Italy are particularly vulnerable, several may be undercapitalised and packed with bad debts they haven't yet recognised, analysts say.

Some Italian executives say that problems there won't be widespread.

"I don't expect a systemic risk for Italy, it will be something manageable internally," said UniCredit SpA's chief executive officer Federico Ghizzoni during a news conference last week.

In Germany, analysts say Commerzbank AG and the publicly-owned landesbanks might struggle to meet the EBA's test for a hypothetical real estate price crash of more than 20%.

"We remain cautious on Commerzbank," analysts from UBS AG said in a note last week. Barclays said public banks HSH Nordbank and NordLB are "more vulnerable in the assessment" because they have below-average provisions and relatively large amounts of non-performing loans.

But Commerzbank's chief finance officer Stephan Engels recently said the lender is well positioned for the test. Liane Buchholz, managing director of Germany's landesbanks, also played down concerns. "We are convinced that there will be no capital gap at any Landesbank after the test," she said.

The UK's two part state-owned banks, Lloyds Banking Group plc and Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc, are expected to pass the EBA test. But RBS chief executive officer Ross McEwan questioned its relevance. On Thursday, Mr McEwan said that basing the EBA results on 2013 financials is an issue because the bank has undergone significant restructuring since.

Executives at Lloyds are concerned that investors will interpret the EBA's results as a guide for separate stress tests conducted by the Bank of England - the results of those tests won't be public until December. Analysts expect Lloyds to perform better in the Bank of England's tests.

"There is a risk that people use the [EBA] results to read into what will come out of the Bank of England's stress tests," says Omar Ali, head of UK Banking at Ernst & Young.

In Spain, some bank executives have told investors, analysts and the media recently that they expect all Spanish lenders to pass the asset-quality review and the stress tests. Spain commissioned its own stress tests of the balance sheets of the country's banks in 2012, as part of the terms of a European bailout.

However, some lenders are still likely to focus on raising capital immediately after the balance sheet check-up as they seek to push their core capital levels above the 10% threshold investors consider optimal, some Spanish investment bankers say.

Banks that fail the tests would have to raise capital, something that could be especially tricky given recent market turmoil.

"Until the last two weeks there was a ready availability of capital to banks... clearly if you look at the current market conditions it is a much more challenging environment especially for banks higher up the risk list," says Stephen Smith, who co-heads an asset quality review task force at KPMG LLP. "I have seen more stressed financial directors than I have in the past."

Recently as fears mounted over the strength of the European economy, bank stocks took a dive. In the past month the Stoxx Europe 600 banks index fell 11.5%.

Meanwhile, the ECB, which will oversee eurozone banks from 4 November, last week published data showing how the bloc's banks have bolstered their balance sheets. The eurozone bank's median Tier 1 Capital ratio increased to 13% in 2013 from 12.4% a year earlier, the ECB said. Some investors are taking that as proof that most banks have taken sufficient measures to pass the tests.