The exposure of Spanish banks to countries considered high risk more than quadruples the European average and it is the country that has the highest, although that does not mean that it is more vulnerable to geopolitical crises like the current ones, according to what the European Banking Authority (EBA) said this Friday.
In its annual transparency report collected by Efethe EBA points out that in June 2024, 10.78% of the assets of Spanish banks were from countries that the S&P rating agency considers high risk, when the average of the 26 countries under its supervision remained at 2.49%.
The other countries that were closest to Spain were Hungary (8.4%), Croatia (7.66%) and Slovenia (3.77%). Far below are the great economic powers of the European Union which are Italy (1.41%), Germany (1.2%) and France (1.06%). The head of risk analysis at the EBA, Ángel Monzón, pointed out that this particular situation in Spain must be read taking into account that its financial entities have made significant investments in emerging countries, particularly in Latin America, which S&P classifies as high risk. .
However, he added that these categories are not necessarily based on geopolitical risk criteria, such as those that may currently occur with conflicts such as Ukraine or the Middle East. In fact, Spanish banks They have an important presence in Latin American countriessuch as Mexico, Brazil or Argentina, as well as Turkey, all of them with a high-risk rating of their sovereign debt by S&P, which is the one that the EBA takes as a reference.
The exposure to high geopolitical risk countries of the 123 large European banks used in the supervisory entity’s sample exceeded half a trillion euros in June.
Geopolitical risk
Spanish banks also have a higher than average exposure to the five sectors that the EBA estimates are vulnerable to geopolitical risks, especially due to the great relative weight that tourism has in the country’s economy.
Specifically, these five vulnerable sectors represented 52.44% of the assets of Spanish entities last June, when the average of the 26 countries in the study was 39.2%. There were eight countries with a higher exposure, in particular Poland (59.75%), Bulgaria (61.41%), Cyprus (61.8%), Slovenia (62.63%) and Greece (66.8%). %).
The EBA study includes 10 Spanish bankswhich are Abanca, BBVA, Banco de Crédito Social Cooperativo, Sabadell, Santander, Bankinter, CaixaBank, Ibercaja, Kutxabank and Unicaja.
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