Who is right – the International Monetary Fund or the market? Until a couple of weeks ago, nervous investors had ignored the IMF’s recent assessment that about 70 per cent of Spain’s banks looked essentially healthy, and instead had sent all bank shares tumbling by about 40 per cent on the previous year.
Only over the past week have investors really begun to discriminate, following Bankia’s part-nationalisation and the government requirement that all banks boost their loan loss provisioning by about €30bn.
Santander’s shares, the best performing, are down only 4 per cent over the past 10 days; Bankia’s, the worst, have slumped 42 per cent.