The Spanish banking sector had the perfect opportunity to show that not all of its lenders are hurting. The sector's three largest banks (Santander, BBVA and La Caixa) were the first to clean up their image by provisioning 14.57 billion euros, which is nearly 30% of the amount of provisions amassed by the entire sector. Nonetheless, a year of transparency has not convinced experts to improve their recommendations of the banks. Experts are still fearful that these three healthy banks will have to merge with less-stable banks.
What the new reforms have done is improve valuations. Default risks have subsided as well.
Collectively, Santander, BBVA, La Caixa, Unicaja, Sabadell, Kutxabank, Popular, Bankinter, Cívica and Ibercaja has amassed just 26.4 billion of the 50 billion euros that Spanish Economic Minister Luis de Guindos said that they had to provision.
Bankia is the only lender that has yet to communicate the amount that it needs in order to cover losses incurred from toxic real estate assets. What Bankia publishes will be critical, because it was predicted that the bank would have for merge with a healthier bank. This poses a major risk, making it impossible to view the Spanish banking sector favorably at this time. BBVA and Cívica are the only two banks that analysts recommend holding on to.