The profitability of Spanish banks is 30% compared to the European average and is one of those that has grown the most in the last year, indicates the European Banking Authority (EBA) in its annual transparency report published this Friday.
In annualized terms, until June 2024 the return on equity (RoE) of the ten Spanish entities that are part of their sample was 14.15%, when the European average was 10.9%indicates the EBA.
Furthermore, this profitability in the case of Spanish banks had grown from 12.27% a year earlier, when in the group of the 26 countries of the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA) participating in this exercise it had fallen slightly (one tenth) and remained very close to its historical maximum.
Among the great economic powers, the Italian, specifically 15.55%.
However, they fell short France (6.87%), in third to last position of the 26 countries represented, especially Germany (5.86%), which closed the pack.
In those two cases, there had been a deterioration of numberssince in year-on-year terms the RoE until June 2023 was 7.78% in France and 6.83% in Germany.
The countries with most profitable sample banks until the second quarter of 2024 were Cyprus (22.09%), Hungary (21.85%), Romania (21.79%), Lithuania (20.54%) and Latvia (20.23%), all of them by above the 20% bar.
The EBA points out that, in global terms for the 123 banks of the sample, the factor that most positively weighed on profitability between mid-2023 and 2024 was the reduction in contributions to bank resolution funds.
On the contrary, what above all prevented the profitability of banking entities from growing further were taxesdue to the taxes that were imposed in some countries on the so-called “fallen from heaven profits” due to the extraordinary results due to the rise in interest rates.
According to EBA estimates, European banks are going to distribute this year to their shareholders, in the form of dividends and share buybacks, a record figure of nearly 90,000 million euros.
That will represent around 50% of the profits that they obtained in 2023. In relative terms it is a percentage somewhat lower than the 52% of the result that they had distributed from their 2022 results. But in absolute figures, it is an amount much higher than the 68,000 million euros that they dedicated to their shareholders in 2023 .
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