Bankinter held its general shareholders’ meeting today, marked by uncertainty surrounding the banking sector after the fall in barely a week of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in the United States and Credit Suisse in Switzerland. The entity maintains that these cases are “foreign” to the Spanish banking and defends its “solid capacity of resistance”.
Bankinter’s message joins those launched these days by other large Spanish banks. The president of Sabadell, Josep Oliu, assured yesterday regarding Credit Suisse and SVB that “it makes no sense to think that they could have any repercussions” in Spanish banking. Last Friday, the president of BBVA, Carlos Torres, described the bank’s profile as “adequate” to respond to uncertainty.
The president of Bankinter, Pedro Guerrero, has warned this morning that rate hikes are already restricting liquidity and that in the coming months there could be “a reduction in debtors’ ability to pay” forcing banks to raise provisions.
However, he has insisted that shareholders “can be very calm” and has described SVB’s management as “elementary recklessness”, headed for a “rapid and inevitable situation of insolvency”. Regarding Credit Suisse, he has assured that its deterioration has been brewing “for years”.
Bankinter estimates its deposit to credit ratio at 102% and its liquidity ratio at 193%. Both the fall of SVB and Credit Suisse have had an impact on the rapid withdrawal of deposits by customers. The Spanish bank has 10,000 million euros in bonds, 80% in public debt, but unlike SVB, it says, it manages risks with sensitivity to the evolution of interest rates.
The CEO of Bankinter, María Dolores Dancausa, stated at the shareholders’ meeting that the bank is “certain that the uncertainty surrounding the financial sector will pass soon” and has taken the opportunity to criticize the new government tax on banking. She “withdraws resources that would be very suitable for these turbulences, to resolve the situation.”
The losses on the stock market of Spanish banks these days respond from his point of view to “a matter of mere reflection or mistrust of the markets.” “However, financial institutions, those in the euro zone, supervised and regulated by the European Central Bank, can and must face this situation with great serenity”, he assured.
Dancausa has assured that Bankinter “enjoys a solid capacity to resist the greatest macroeconomic adversities that may occur” and has described its “solvency and liquidity” situation as “comfortable”. “We can and must face these periods of turbulence with the greater serenity, confidence and poise”, he added.
In their interventions, the shareholders have taken the opportunity to ask the bank to raise the dividend more to increase the value of the entity. The ECB and the Bank of Spain have recommended prudence to euro zone and Spanish entities when remunerating shareholders, in anticipation of the need for new provisions.
