Published : Oct. 4, 2012 - 20:34
MADRID (AFP) ― A “bad bank” that will mop up toxic assets in Spain’s stricken financial sector is to be launched in December, the government said Wednesday.
Spain’s eurozone partners pushed Madrid into creating the institution, which will be tasked with buying up bad assets choking Spanish banks since a 2008 property market collapse.
“It will acquire the assets at prudently calculated prices and will dynamize the housing market in Spain,” Economy Minister Luis de Guindos told a parliamentary finance committee.
Spain’s Economy Minister Luis de Guindos. (Bloomberg)
The price of the assets would be decided by their “real economic value,” he said.
The bad bank is being created so as to allow the banks to sell troubled assets such as bad loans, unfinished buildings and vacant land. Policymakers hope it will free the banks to boost new lending.
The creation of a bad bank was among the conditions imposed by the eurozone in return for a rescue loan of up to 100 billion euros to repair the Spanish banks’ weakened balance sheets.
An independent audit led by U.S. auditors Oliver Wyman found that the banks would need about 59 billion euros to survive a severe, three-year financial and economic downturn.
But Madrid says the banks can find some of that money from other sources, including asset sales, meaning they will only need to draw about 40 billion euros from the eurozone loan.
The bad bank will be financed by the state and by private investors, who are expected to bring in “at least” 55 percent of the capital,” said de Guindos, who heads to London Thursday to defend his government’s 2013 austerity budget and economic reform program.