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.
Pablo Fernández | The “Report on the financial and banking crisis in Spain, 2008-2014” published by the Bank of Spain last May is 252 pages long, but omits important facts and dates. The most surprising thing is that it seems to assume that the financial and banking crisis in Spain was the result of “contagion” from the ‘”international financing crisis”.
A lot of matters need to be addressed in Spain’s banking sector in the next four years. Urgent matters are the full privatisation of Bankia and the irrelevant BMN; completing the transformation of the savings banks (La Caixa, Kutxabank, Ibercaja, Unicaja and Liberbank), the adjustment of Banco Popular and the retirement of the post-war bankers.
MADRID | May 9, 2015 | By Fernando G. Urbaneja | Spanish banks are still the central pillar of the Spanish stock market: seven lenders account for nearly 40 percent of the IBEX-35 index.
MADRID | April 24, 2015 | By Fernando G. Urbaneja | Bankia held its general meeting in Valencia (headquarters of one of the integrated in the brand new boxes) this week to approve its 2014 results –the year of the firm’s regeneration– and design its future roadmap. One of its non-explicit goals is to accelerate the partial and progressive privatization of the entity before November general elections in Spain.
MADRID | By Fernando G. Urbaneja | A Council of 15 members with different sensibilities, experiences, but solid and with personality. The new La Caixa Foundation maintains the character of the old savings bank, and is committed to professional and political independence. A delicate and subtle game of checks and balances.
VALENCIA | By Luis Torralba, via valenciaplaza | Rosend Ortí, director general at Caixa Popular, one of the very few small saving banks that have survived the financial typhoon in Spain: “The partnership model resists well against the current crisis.”
MADRID | By Fernando Barciela | Alvaro Cuervo is director at CUNEF University and board member of BME and ACS: “In the US, everybody understood that the housing sector had fallen, but in Spain there is the belief that the economic cycle will turn the page by itself.”
MADRID | By Carlos Díaz Guell | The Spanish government has already made clear to the regional authorities that the old savings bank model must die for its sins.
José Luis Marco, CAPITAL MADRID | Spanish government’ two first RDL condemned more than one financial institution to the red throughout this exercise. The sentence has not been limited to the four entities under the FROB umbrella but has also reached some entities that are in the process of integration with other groups, such as CEISS Bank, Caja Duero Spain, in full merger with Unicaja, to take losses of 125…