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Banks

European economy, In Europe 21st March 2023

Banks (trading on 0.6x price-to-book-value ratio and 6x price-to-earnings ratio for 2023E) still expect record year in 2023

Dirk Becker (Allianz GI) | Credit Suisse has been seen as the weakest link in the global banking sector for several months, after various scandals and poor management decisions. We think the merger can therefore help to stabilise the global financial system: In our view, UBS are being paid for running down the risky parts of Credit Suisse, and they get to keep the highly profitable Swiss domestic unit in…

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Spanish economy 23rd February 2022

Banking: From Confusion To Perplexity. A Question Of Transparency

Aristóbulo de Juan | The Spanish system lends itself to great confusion. It is therefore difficult to diagnose. This situation has been dragging on since the recent real estate bubble and the poor handling of the ensuing crisis. Perhaps as a consequence of the doctrine of deregulation. But this situation continues to be favoured by the existence of an ineffective regulatory framework, based on the elusive principle that it is…

Spain is also the second country in Europe with the lowest costs in digital banking

Markets, World economy 21st May 2018

The Future of Banking: Secure Money and Deregulation of the Financial System

In a conference by Miguel Fernández Ordóñez, Governor of the Bank of Spain from 2006 to 2012, at the Ramón Areces Foundation in Madrid, he tried to find out whether, within the technology-generated changes, there is one that is “disruptive”, that can produce a radical change in the banking activity of such importance that, as is happening with other industries, it forces private banks to transform themselves into companies very different from those that exist today.

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Spanish economy 24th October 2014

Spanish banks: The sun is back but not for everyone yet

ZURICH | By Ignacio Sanz at UBS | GDP expectations continue to improve, NPLs are starting to come down although we do not expect write-backs for any bank, capital looks comfortable ahead of AQR and banks show a healthy funding while underwriting new deposits at c0.5-0.7%. The market knows all that with banks trading north of 1x NAV15e although for retail banks making more than 10% ROE with 0% rates is challenging.

No Picture

In Europe 6th October 2014

European Investment Banks: Q314 – It’s all about September

ZURICH | The Corner | UBS analysts explain that in September, volatility started rising in almost all major markets and asset classes. Higher Rates and FX volatility, driven by diverging monetary policies in the US and Europe, typically suggest higher activity and more favourable operating conditions for FICC. Although UBS analyts are still cautious about FICC for structural reasons, some cyclical improvement and potential upgrades in FICC consensus estimates for Q3 2014 are now more likely (UBS tweaks his CS and DBK 2014E EPS forecasts 2% and 3% upwards, respectively). For global IBs, they forecast FICC revenues up 9%, Equities up 3% and IBD up 12% y/y. In the European IB space, they prefer Barclays and SocGen for stock specific reasons.

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Markets 5th September 2014

Spanish banks seek profits without lending

MADRID | By Francisco López | The purchase of Barclays’ retail banking division in Spain by CaixaBank has further accentuated the gap among the three major lenders (Santander, BBVA and Caixa) from the rest of their competitors. Experts insist on this process of bipolarisation of the Spanish banking system, with very big banks in the national and even international level, and other local, small or very specialised banks. All banks have done their homework with the restructuring, but now they face the most complicated challenge: to adapt their business models to the new scenario emerged after the crisis and become profitable again.

big banks mergers

In Europe 30th August 2014

GLAC, a term you’ll need to become familiar with after the summer

MADRID | By Raimundo Poveda | Those who are interested in banking policy are doomed to learn some new term day in, day out. GLAC (i.e. “gone-concern loss-absorbing capacity”) is the capacity to absorb the losses of an unfeasible bank. Let us recall that the banking regulation declares a bank “unfeasible” not when it collapses but when it fails to comply with the minimum capital requirements –even if its financial assets are positive.