A total of 13 banks operating in Spain posted net losses in the first half of 2021. This is compared to 15 entities that recorded ‘red numbers’ in the same period of the previous year, according to the financial statements of banks published on Friday by the Bank of Spain. In the first half of the year, ten banks associated with the Spanish Banking Association (AEB), one of the Spanish…
Funcas believes that the Spanish banking sector would still have to make provisions amounting to 12,000 million euros in the income statements of 2021 and 2022, and expects an increase in doubtful credit between the end of 2022 and early 2023.Specifically, Funcas estimates that the “peak” of doubtful credit will be reached between the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, with a subsequent recovery, so that NPLs will be close to, but slightly above, pre-Covid-19 pandemic levels in 2024.
Alphavalue | Spanish banks recorded a shortfall of 7,336 million euros in 4Q20, equivalent to 0.94%, compared to the target for their minimum requirements for own funds and eligible liabilities of 29.10% of risk-weighted assets, set on average for the sector in Spain by 2024 by the SRB. These figures leave Spanish banks lagging behind the Banking Union as a whole, whose average shortfall was 0.58% or 39,604 euros million in 4Q20 with respect to the MREL target.
T.C. | The five big Spanish banks posted net profit of 7.825 billion euros in the first quarter of this year, compared with a loss of 1.053 billion in the first quarter of 2020, when they made provisions of 3.9 billion to deal with the coronavirus crisis. It should be noted, however, that without the effect of the Caixabank / Bankia merger, the Q1’21 profit would be considerably lower at…
The Catalan bank has informed the trade unions of the adjustment resulting from the merger with Bankia. The plan, in principle, includes the lay-off of 8,291 workers, 18% of the group’s workforce in our country, although the final figure could be lower depending on the negotiations that began last week. Until now, the most significant restructuring plan in the Spanish financial industry was carried out by Bankia in 2013 and affected 4,500 workers.
Spanish banks’ debt with the European Central Bank, which reflects their gross demand of the institution’s regular financing operations, did not show any change in February and remained unchanged at 261.21 billion euros, exactly the same as a month earlier. However, according to Bank of Spain data reported by Europa Press, the increase is 100.24% compared to the same month of the previous year.
Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Bankia, Sabadell and Bankinter posted combined losses of €5.55 Bn last year, with their accounts badly affected by the coronavirus, compared to the more than €13.5 Bn achieved in 2019. These negative figures are mainly due to the great losses suffered by Santander, €8.77 Bn, the first of its history, compared to the €6.51 Bn it earned in 2019. Santander’s losses came after increasing provisions for the covid-19 crisis and assuming an impairment of €12.6 Bn in the value of its subsidiaries in the UK, the US and Poland.
Renta 4 | The reasons for the cease of negotiations would be, on the one hand, the lack of agreement on the exchange equation and the price to be paid, and on the other, the distribution of power. The suggested retirement for Sabadell’s chairman Josep Oliú in exchange for the operation being paid for in cash would not be well received by the ECB, given the risk of BBVA’s chairman Carlos Torres being charged in relation with the Villarejo case. This could then leave the merged group without a chairman. So the ECB would have urged a joint presidency between Torres and Oliú.
Miguel Navascués | The depression and the drop in inflation -or even deflation- have led the central banks to try a disastrous experiment: negative interest rates. Even Christine Lagarde speaks of putting the reference interest rate at -2%. This has been a mistake for several reasons. It discourages the holding of liquid deposits (which logically yield zero or negative), but it does not make people anticipate consumption, if prices stagnate or fall.
In February, Liberbank and Unicaja concluded possible merger contacts after failing to reach an agreement about the likely distribution of the shares of the new entity, but now the integration of both banks would give rise to the fifth lender in Spain in terms of asset volume, with €98.6 Bn (€56.7 Bn Unicaja and 41.95 Bn Liberbank). Net profit would reach €102 M in H1’20 (€61 M UNI and €41 M LBK). The new bank would have a network of 1,607 branches (1,028 UNI and 579 LBK) and 9,942 employees (6,274 UNI and 3,668 respectively).