Spain’s top five banks posted a combined net profit of 7.989 billion euros in the first half of 2015, up 48 percent from a year earlier, thanks to the improving economic situation and a decline in bad loans provisions.
MADRID | March 30, 2015 | By Nuria Álvarez, at Renta 4 | Strong gains to remain challenging in the year ahead as banking environment undergoes sectoral changes.
LONDON | Guest comment by Barclays | The financial success of Sabadell’s offer to acquire TSB hinges on its ability to cut TSB’s costs by 20% almost exclusively by migrating it onto a new IT platform, in our view. This looks a challenging aspiration to us and while Sabadell has successfully integrated domestic Spanish acquisitions at some speed, cross-border integration onto the Spanish platform is largely untested and faces the challenges of a different regulatory framework and different product design. It clearly helps that Lloyds will pay for the integration spend but we believe that meeting the near-term target of EPS neutrality will require a relatively quick delivery of the cost savings.
The Corner | March 20, 2015 | ACF experts believe that “the impact of the acquisition of TSB in earnings per share would be marginally negative in 2015 and 2016, but -5.7% in 2017 if a new synergy plan is not presented.”
MADRID | March 16, 2015 | By Fernando G. Urbaneja | The hardest hit stock on the Ibex 35 last week was Sabadell bank, with the lender losing 7% of its valuation after news emerged of a pending takeover bid for British bank TSB.
MADRID | By Jaime Santisteban | Caixabank’s net profit dropped by 54.6% to €152M in the first quarter. Analysts highlight the positive impact of integrating Banco de Valencia and Banca Cívica. Spain’s third biggest bank by market value improved its margins and reduced its NPL rate for the first time since the crisis started.
MADRID | In a interview published by El País this weekend, Jaume Guardiola, Banco Sabadell’s CEO (which is the fifth Spanish bank in terms of assets) said he was very optimistic about the country’s financial system and its economy as a whole. Despite the crisis that besieges Spain’s banking sector, he noted the industry will become smaller and more professional. He also thinks that the Spanish economy is showing “unequivocal”…