The CAM's current situation is indicative of the Bank of Spain's clumsy attempts to restructure the financial system. The Bank of Spain's supervisor systematically masked the lender's struggles months after they began to show symptoms that an intervention was necessary. But Ordóñez's institution forgot the axiom that in the end, the public eye will see the truth. Last Friday, just a week after the lender failed the latest round of stress tests, an intervention was called for.
The Bank of Spain is now facing difficulty in selling a near-broke savings bank to potential buyers; this will be hard work if we keep in mind that in the next two years it will have to pay off maturing debt worth no less than 9 billion euros, but doesn't have sufficient liquidity to do this. Most people understand that the CAM did not get into this mess in a short period of time. In the spring it failed to incorporate Banco Base, and at this time it had already accumulated 6.2 billion euros worth of debt.
