BBVA CEO expects half the number of Spanish Banks by 2014

 

The CEO of BBVA, Ángel Cano, has commented how the number of Banks and Cajas currently operating in Spain will have halved by the end of 2013.

Cano made the prediction during a lecture he was giving to the ESADE business school, where he spoke of the "sharp fall" in the number of financial institutions he expected to see by the end of the current restructuring process, which has seen BBVA acquire Catalan lender, Unnim.

Despite the many opprotunities that this afforded to medium to large sized institutions, Cano has stressed that the main priority of BBVA was to become better and not necessarily bigger. This comes despite BBVA's acquisition of Unnim bringing the Bank an additional 1 Million customer, and bringing their market share in Catalonia up to 11% - the third largest lender behind CaixaBank and CatalunyaCaixa.

Prior to the first round of EU stress tests held in June 2010 there were 45 Banking Institutions in Spain, with further takeovers and mergers expected to to reduce the number to less than 15.