Catalan banks in the eye of the storm: investors start to get the jitters
At the moment, the biggest losers in the Ibex 35 index after Sunday’s referendum vote in Catalonia are the banks, particularly the Catalan lenders. Both Sabadell and CaixaBank have acknowledged that if independence were to happen, they would move their headquarters to another autonomous region in Spain. In this way they would keep their access to the ECB’s liquidity and their clients would remain under the protection of the national and European Deposit Guarantee Fund. But perhaps it’s too soon to ring the alarm bells: while the Ibex dropped, other European bourses rose. This shows that Catalonia is still far from becoming a systemic risk for the EU.