Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2013. It describes the Spanish banking sector and Global Finance’s ranking as of that date. Several banks named have since disappeared or merged: Banco Popular was sold to Santander in 2017, and Caja Espana-Duero, Caja3, Liberbank and BMN were absorbed by other banks.
As it does every year, the respected magazine Global Finance has drawn up its ranking of the 50 safest and most solvent banks in the world. Last year we had a Spanish bank in the ranking, in sixth place no less: Banco Santander. This year, 2013, it only just makes the ranking, in last place (number 50). That said, both Banco Santander and BBVA are as safe and solvent as many other banks on the list (despite being penalised for being Spanish banks).
Let’s start with the safest banks in Spain:
According to Luis de Guindos (Spain’s economy minister), only nine banks will be left in Spain after the crisis. Big Spanish banking will be made up of five financial groups with assets of more than €110 billion (Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Banco Popular and Banco Sabadell), one highly specialised “niche” bank (Bankinter) and three viable regional institutions (Unicaja, Ibercaja and Kutxabank). The three safest would undoubtedly be Santander, BBVA and CaixaBank.
Caja España-Duero (Ceiss), Caja3, Liberbank and BMN are in the middle of a recapitalisation process, and for now we’d put a question mark over them, since we don’t know whether they’ll be able to meet the European Union’s requirements.
Going back to the ranking of the world’s safest banks, some of the banks in the top 10 also appeared in an earlier ranking in which we looked at the safest banks in emerging markets, a ranking we put together more as an investment opportunity, since those markets were growing at a pace never seen before.
Further reading
Featured image: Carlos Delgado, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
