The Ministry of the Economy unveiled yesterday the secret that wasn't so secret: Roland Berger and Oliver Wyman were the firms selected for auditing the Spanish banking sector.
The two consulting firms, alongside the American fund manager BlackRock, just finished auditing the Bank of Spain, which several months ago contracted both firms to evaluate how much more in provisions the Spanish banking sector would need to stay afloat. A formal report was submitted more than a month ago, and the Ministry of the Economy is already aware of the results.
According to sources close to the Bank of Spain, Oliver Wyman reported the most modest figure for how much in extra provisions the banks will need: around 30 billion euros. This is exactly the amount of provisions called for in Luis de Guindos's second round of financial reforms.
Roland Berger believes that the banks need to come up with another 50 billion euros. This estimate if farther away from the 30-billion that De Guindos called for. BlackRock wants the banks to find another 100 billion euros in order to clean up their balance sheets once and for all.
