Outlooks on Five Spanish Financial Groups and Three European Bank Branches Revised Following Outlook Revision on Spain
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Outlooks On Five Spanish Financial Groups And Three European Bank Branches Revised Following Outlook Revision On Spain Primary Credit Analyst: Elena Iparraguirre, Madrid (34) 91-389-6963; [email protected] Secondary Contacts: Luigi Motti, Madrid (34) 91-788-7234; [email protected] Carlos Cobo, Madrid +34 91 788 72 32; [email protected] Fabio Mostacci, Madrid +34 91 788 72 09; [email protected] Alexander Ekbom, Stockholm (46) 8-440-5911; [email protected] Nigel Greenwood, London (44) 20-7176-7211; [email protected] Thierry Grunspan, Paris (33) 1-4420-6739; [email protected] E.Robert Hansen, CFA, New York (1) 212-438-7402; [email protected] • On Nov. 29, 2013, Standard & Poor's revised the outlook on the long-term sovereign credit rating on Spain to stable from negative. • Spanish banks continue to rebalance their funding profiles. They are reducing their reliance on funding from the ECB and foreign sources, increasing the weight of more stable domestic retail funding in the mix, and sharply reducing the cost of domestic deposits. We expect this trend to continue, particularly in the context of stabilizing sovereign creditworthiness. • We now see a stable trend for industry risk in Spain. We continue to view the trend for economic risk as stable. • We are revising to stable from negative the outlooks on four Spanish banking groups and three branches of European banks, and to positive from stable the outlook on one institution. We are maintaining negative outlooks on six other Spanish banking groups. • In three cases, the stable outlooks reflect the diminishing likelihood of a rating downgrade as risks in the operating environment in Spain are abating. In four other cases, the stable outlook reflects our view that the sovereign's creditworthiness is stabilizing. • The positive outlook reflects the positive trends we see in the bank's WWW.STANDARDANDPOORS.COM DECEMBER 2, 2013 1 © Standard & Poor's. All rights reserved. No reprint or dissemination without Standard & Poor’s permission. See Terms of Use/Disclaimer on the last page.1222797 | 300642892 Outlooks On Five Spanish Financial Groups And Three European Bank Branches Revised Following Outlook Revision On Spain capital and business model transformation, which could lead to an upgrade in the medium term. • Conversely, the negative outlooks reflect our view that we could lower the ratings due to bank-specific factors despite the now more stable environment. MADRID (Standard & Poor's) Dec. 2, 2013--Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said today it has revised the outlook on five Spanish financial groups and three branches of European banks: • We revised to stable from negative the outlooks on four Spanish banking groups (and some group entities): Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (BBVA) and its highly strategic U.S. subsidiaries BBVA Compass Bancshares Inc. (BBVA Compass) and Compass Bank; Caixabank, S.A. (Caixabank) and its parent Caja de Ahorros y Pensiones de Barcelona (la Caixa); Ibercaja Banco, S.A. (Ibercaja); and Cecabank, S.A. (CECA). • We also revised to stable from negative the outlooks on three branches of European banks: Barclays Bank plc (Madrid Branch), Deutsche Bank (Madrid branch), and BNP Paribas Securities Services (Madrid branch). • We revised to positive from stable the outlook on Bankinter S.A. The outlook on the following six Spanish banking groups remains negative: Bankia, S.A. (Bankia) and its parent Banco Financiero y de Ahorros, S.A. (BFA); Banco Popular Español, S.A. (Popular); Banco de Sabadell, S.A. (Sabadell); Kutxabank, S.A. (Kutxabank); Barclays Bank, S.A. (BBSA); and NCG Banco, S.A. (NCG). We have affirmed all ratings on the above-mentioned institutions. We have not included Banco Santander, S.A. and its subsidiary Santander Consumer Finance S.A. as part of this review. The ratings on both entities remain on CreditWatch with positive implications, where they were placed on Nov. 22, 2013. We have also not included in this review an assessment of the impact on any of the above-mentioned institutions of the Royal Decree-Law 14/2013, published on Nov. 30, 2013. We understand that this Royal Decree has modified, among other things, the legislation on income tax and the characteristics of certain deferred tax assets for Spanish financial institutions. We are currently undertaking a review of this recently published legislation and will determine and communicate within the next few weeks if we consider that it will likely affect our assessment of the creditworthiness of the above-mentioned Spanish financial institutions. The outlook revision on BBVA relates directly to the outlook revision of the long-term sovereign credit rating on Spain to stable from negative, as the ratings on BBVA are limited by our current assessment of the sovereign creditworthiness. The outlook revision on BBVA led to a similar outlook revision on its highly strategic U.S. subsidiaries, BBVA Compass and Compass Bank. WWW.STANDARDANDPOORS.COM DECEMBER 2, 2013 2 © Standard & Poor's. All rights reserved. No reprint or dissemination without Standard & Poor’s permission. See Terms of Use/Disclaimer on the last page.1222797 | 300642892 Outlooks On Five Spanish Financial Groups And Three European Bank Branches Revised Following Outlook Revision On Spain Similarly, the outlook revision of Barclays Bank plc (Madrid Branch), Deutsche Bank (Madrid branch), and BNP Paribas Securities Services (Madrid branch) is also directly related to the outlook revision of the long-term sovereign credit rating on Spain to stable from negative, in accordance with our criteria for assessing the creditworthiness of EU branches of EU banks. The rating on a branch of an EU bank based in another EU jurisdiction is the lower of the bank's ICR and a level that is four notches above our foreign currency rating on the host sovereign if that rating is 'BBB-' or higher. The outlook revision to positive on Bankinter, and to stable on Caixabank and its parent la Caixa, Ibercaja, and CECA, reflects our view that downside risks for banks in the operating environment in Spain are diminishing. In particular, we believe that Spanish banks have made significant progress in structurally rebalancing their funding profiles--a trend that we expect to continue in the context of the stabilizing sovereign creditworthiness. Banks' loan books have fallen sharply while domestic deposits are growing. This has resulted in an increase in the weight of stable funding sources in the banks' funding mix. We expect core domestic deposits (as we define them) to account for 57% of the domestic loan book by end-2013. Since the beginning of 2013, the cost of domestic deposits has also fallen sharply. The financial system's net external liabilities--equivalent to 14% of domestic loans as of June 2013--are well below the 24% average reported in the 2008-2011 period, as issuance in the international capital markets remains limited. Furthermore, we note that banks' net reliance on funding from the European Central Bank (ECB), while still high (€234 billion in October 2013), is trending downward, having reduced by 40% from the peak in August 2012. These factors all support our revised view of the trend for industry risk in the Spanish banking system as stable. We continue to view the trend for economic risk, in the context of our assessment of the financial industry, as stable. We expect the housing market correction to persist. In our view, real estate prices will fall further in 2014 and 2015 and activity will remain modest. However, following the significant provisioning efforts in 2012, we believe that Spanish banks have already recognized most of the credit losses generated by the bursting of the real estate bubble. This will allow credit provisions on aggregate to gradually decline from this year onward, despite banks having to continue allocating provisions to cope with expected asset quality deterioration in the rest of their portfolios (primarily on non-real-estate corporate exposures and residential mortgages). We believe that economic recovery will be modest and gradual, and will remain mainly export-driven in 2014. Weak trends in domestic demand will therefore continue to put pressure on the creditworthiness of private sector agents and challenge their resilience. We do not expect the financial system to start reducing its volume of problem assets until 2015. We expect the anchor for banks operating in Spain to remain at 'bb+' in the medium term, reflecting the stable trend that we see for economic and industry risk in the Spanish banking sector. The anchor is the starting point in WWW.STANDARDANDPOORS.COM DECEMBER 2, 2013 3 © Standard & Poor's. All rights reserved. No reprint or dissemination without Standard & Poor’s permission. See Terms of Use/Disclaimer on the last page.1222797 | 300642892 Outlooks On Five Spanish Financial Groups And Three European Bank Branches Revised Following Outlook Revision On Spain assigning a bank's issuer credit rating. Despite our view that risks in the operating environment in Spain are easing, we maintain negative outlooks on a number of institutions. This is because we consider that there are bank-specific factors (in most cases related to the banks' ability to strengthen capital) that could negatively affect our current assessments of those banks' stand-alone credit profiles (SACPs), as detailed below. STABLE OUTLOOKS Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria S.A. and subsidiaries The stable outlook on the long-term rating on BBVA mirrors that on Spain. This is because the long-term rating on BBVA is constrained by the long-term sovereign credit rating on Spain. The stable outlook also reflects our belief that BBVA's asset quality will continue to outperform its peers in most of the markets where it operates, and that the bank will be able to absorb the impact of still-high provisioning charges while reporting sound net operating performance.