On 20 July 2012 the Eurogroup decided to grant financial assistance to Spain in the form of a banking recapitalisation programme. It was agreed that it would cover financing needs of up to EUR 100 billion, while the specific amount would be determined based inter alia on a thorough bottom-up assessment of capital shortfalls for individual banks. The results of the bank-by-bank stress test conducted by an external consultant with regard to 14 banking groups comprising more than 90% of the Spanish banking system were published on 20 July 2012. I am comforted by the fact that the total capital shortfall of the Spanish banking sector comes out at slightly less than EUR 60 billion. The final State aid provided to Spanish banks will be lower than the reported capital shortfall, given measures...
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