The vertiginous escalation of interest rates in the Eurozone has been the manna that banking had been going on for a whole decade and that it has finally arrived. Thanks to this, the large Spanish entities have shot up their margins to levels not seen since before the Lehman Brothers explosion and this has allowed them to earn almost 50% more during the first six months of the year. Specific, the joint profit of Banco Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Sabadell, Bankinter and Unicaja reached 5,300 million euros from January to Junealthough it represents less than half of the total profits of the six entities, taking into account other markets such as Mexico or Brazil.
Beyond the types, the first swords of the sector have insisted on each appearance this week in the strength that the economy is showing homeland, with a drop in the demand for credit (as is logical in the face of higher financing costs), but without a notable or worrying upturn in delinquency. In fact, in some cases, such as Banco Santander or CaixaBank, which brings defaults to a minimum of 15 years, even falling in the semester.
If these results did not include the tax that the sector paid in the first quarter, for a total of 1,120 million euros, the joint profit of the six listed entities would have been about 6,400 million, 80% more than the result of 2022.
In world terms, listed banks obtained a net result of close to 12,400 million euros, 20% more if it is compared with the first six months of 2022, when the first rate hike had not yet taken place, of the nine that the ECB has carried out since just one month later, since the carrera against inflation in July of last year.
GROWTH