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Forumer storico
Spain plans more restructuring of savings banks
“We are reforming our financial sector and it is the most ambitious, far-reaching reform of that industry over the last 20 years in Spain,” Zapatero told the Financial Times in an interview.
Although confidence in the eurozone’s so-called “peripheral” economies recovered tentatively this week after government bond sales by Spain and Portugal, Spanish bankers fear the reprieve will be short-lived and say weaker banks and cajas are still unable to raise long-term money on the wholesale finance markets.
“Until today, the authorities have always said that the banking system was fine,” said one Spanish banker. “Finally they are acknowledging that the problem is there and they are working on a way to solve it.”
Mr Zapatero is acutely aware that fickle bond market investors have switched their attention from the immediate problems of the Spanish budget deficit – which they believe is being brought under control – to the contingent liabilities that the public sector has assumed by virtue of its public guarantee of the entire banking system.

“We have to finish off the restructuring process . . . so that there will not be the shadow of a doubt over the sovereign creditworthiness in the system,” Mr Zapatero said.
Analysts and bankers say Spain, which has so far spent €15bn ($20bn) on recapitalising the cajas, needs to inject a further €20bn-€120bn to stabilise the system.
Barclays Capital estimated on Friday that Spain needed to spend €32-€78bn more, which would increase public debt by 3-8 per cent of gross domestic product.
Bankers in Madrid say it is not clear how recapitalisation will work in practice, although one possibility would be for the Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring, or Frob, to take equity in a problematic caja rather than continue to extend credit.
After this process, described by one banker as akin to “partial nationalisation”, the Frob could eventually sell the institution or its assets to domestic or foreign buyers.
Mr Zapatero stopped short of admitting that the cajas required large injections of public money, but said that some state contribution would be needed if the government’s preferred option of private capital raising proves insufficient.
“We’re absolutely convinced that the restructuring of the Spanish financial system can be done by strengthening the system with private capital, and perhaps with very limited recourse to public capital,” he said.
To soothe investors and promote transparency, the Bank of Spain has told the cajas – already reduced in number from 45 to 17 through a series of more or less obligatory mergers – to produce detailed reports of their exposure to property by the end of January.