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.