BFA rushes to sell Bankia shares

Banco Financiero y Ahorros (BFA) has gone into sixth gear to sell Bankia's industrial shares. Last July it elected to sell 12.1% of International Airline Group to a group of foreign institutional investors and last week it transfered 20% of Indra to Sepi.

The deal is not exempt from criticism, because the national government acted as both seller and buyer, supporting the move because of its strategic importance to the company. Now it is known that before the two transactions happened, at the beginning of the year BFA bought the 30% that it did not own in Bancaja Inversiones from Deutsche Bank and the European investment fund Picton. Bancaja Inversiones is the holding company that the old Valencian savings bank created to buy 5.4% of Iberdrola and 12.6% on NH.

The deal confirms that José Ignacio Goirigolzarri and his management team are rapidly putting together an industrials portfolio that is nearly ready to go on sale on open market even though it will hardly bring any profits. At the same time, the sale not only illustrates the failure of Bancaja's industrial venture, but also the bad bed on the part of Deutsche Bank and Picton, who received 774 million euros on a 1.35 billion euro investment. Sometimes, it's best to stick to what you know.

Although some will try to postpone the shares until 2014 in order to take advantage of the possibility that the stock market will increase in value, it is true that BFA is smart to speed the divestment process so that it can meet its number one goal: clean up the banking sector and help the national government recuperate the lion's share of public funds that it has invested.