Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2010, and reports news from 10 September 2010. The bank rankings and deposit offers, such as ActivoBank at 4.50% APR for new money from €3,000, are from that time. Banco Popular was taken over by Santander in 2017, and Spanish banking consolidated heavily after 2010.
In the current bank war to secure a strategic position in the market, the Comisión Nacional de la Competencia (Spain’s competition authority) today approved the merger of Banco Sabadell and Banco Guipuzcoano. The merger will be carried out by absorbing Banco Guipuzcoano into Banco Sabadell, and if it succeeds, it would make Banco Sabadell Spain’s fourth-largest banking group.
Further mergers among Spanish banks are not ruled out, since in the middle of a crisis the only way to increase profits is to merge so that some branches can be closed.
The war to attract capital through fixed-term deposits also continues, with returns getting ever higher and customers’ ties to the bank itself ever weaker.
ActivoBank has joined the most profitable deposits of September 2010. Not wanting to be outdone by Banco Popular, it has launched a deposit paying 4.50% APR (TAE) for new money from €3,000. The war goes on.
Featured image: Zarateman, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
