In the middle of a debate yesterday about the creation of a 'bad bank' designed to clean up lender balance sheets, Santander Executive Chairman Emilio Botín radically opposed this solution.
The Spanish banker insisted that the new government, which will be headed by recent prime minister elect Mariano Rajoy, sideline this idea and promote a total restructuring of the banking sector through mergers and acquisitions and selloffs of the weakest firms. "I do not like the bad bank idea," Botín said during the inauguration of one of Santander's Data Protection Centers (DPC) located in Cantabria.
The banker's statements came one day after the Spanish Association of Bankers (AEB following the Spanish acronym) also voiced its disapproval of the bad bank as an effective measure for eliminating failing banks from the Spanish financial system.
Botín continued to speak out against projects that "cost taxpayers money," which have been done in other countries and "not solved the credit problem," a problem that is one of the key points for getting out of the crisis.
