Mikel Bilbao, partner at GBS Finance, talks about Savings banks Chaos

“All the private equity firms in Spain, and from abroad, have looked over the portfolios of the savings banks in detail, but there haven’t been many deals,” says Mikel Bilbao, a partner at private bank GBS Finance.

“Initially savings banks were selling to recover their costs. They were reluctant to sell at a discount because of the impact on the profit and loss account”, explains Bilbao. ” They did not want to show losses because it immediately made them look weak. Now they really do need liquidity, and that outweighs the profit and loss account impact”.