Italy’s budget deficit of – 2.4% of GDP for the period 2019/2021 presented by the government increased the debt premium of 50bp to 280 bp and a 4% fall in the FTSE-MIB.This rise in the risk premium impacts negatively on the Italian banks in fundamentally three ways.
Marcus, Goldman Sachs’s retail digital bank, opened officially in the UK on 27 September. It is an investment bank which enters the retail sector and a new participant in a mature market. But for the established names, however, “it marks the beginning of something that could cause significant disruption of prices”, analysts at Santander explain.
Spain is behind the UK and followed by the Netherlands in the provision of basic (transactional) services to its customers, with prices 58% lower than the average of seven countries analysed. Germany is at the other extreme with an average annual price of 181 euros.
Ofelia Marín-Lozano | The Spanish financial sector has made an unprecedented effort to sanitise its books: since the beginning of the crisis in 2008, sanitising and provisions (amounting to some 260 billion euros) have reduced profit margins by two thirds, according to figures from the latest annual meeting of the financial sector. The role of digitilisation replacing branches was one of the recurrent themes of the meeting.
J.L.M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Assocation) | We are echoing the IMF’s recent report on the evolution of the European economy. All of Europe is seeing growth, but this has dynamic has to be supported by structural reforms which boost potential growth and best financing to achieve this.
According to a note to clients, Morgan Stanley believes that UBS, HSBC and Société Générale should perform well during the quarter. Compared with the US Banks, they have a downward risk due to investment banking fees and upside due to the outlook for equities.
Eurozone banks are currently keeping 690 billion euros at their central bank, according to the ECB’s last figures. While the European Commission aims to achieve by end-2018 a completed banking union, this an evidence of a more fragmented market. Are lenders suspicious of their refinancing capability in order to honour their debts? And why is Ewald Nowotny asking to cut them some slack?
On Friday, S&P raised its rating on the main Spanish banks by one notch. The decision came in the wake of the rating upgrde by the same agency for Spain’s public debt on March 23, so its “a logical move,” according to Renta4.
The stability in Spain’s growth in the fourth quarter compared with the third is the result of two forces pulling in opposite directions: the strength of the export markets has offset the adverse effect of increased political uncertainty in Catalonia.
Probably the fact they came from Euskadi and were based there is what saved the former Basque cajas (savings banks) from the worst vices which destroyed hundreds of lenders throughout Spain, according to Xabier Sagredo, executive chairman of BBK.