In 2023, Spanish banks earned around €39 billion before taxes. This record profit was due to the sudden increase in interest rates set by the European Central Bank (ECB) to combat inflation, which hit the wallets of many families. At the same time, banks benefited from the remuneration paid by Spain’s central bank for their deposits, which rose from -0.5% to 4% in just over a year.
However, this did not sit well with Sumar, who demanded that the bank reveal how much it had paid each entity. The bank responded that this information was subject to professional secrecy, a concept that Pablo Hernández de Cos had established in a speech he gave on Wednesday at Congress. This response angered Yolanda Díaz and her parliamentary group, who announced they would denounce the bank to the Administrative Court of Contests for not providing this data.
The topic became a major issue during Hernández de Cos’ intervention in the Economic Affairs Committee at Congress on Tuesday when there were expectations of a possible merger between BBVA and Sabadell. Despite this, Hernández de Cos remained silent on the issue (“I cannot and must not comment on any possible operation involving two significant entities”) but emphasized that “it is a good time to pay attention to what is the optimal level of concentration in the banking sector.”
Carlos Martín asked about this level of concentration during his intervention but mainly focused on monetary policy and how Spanish banks benefit from it. In particular, he questioned Hernández de Cos about “the transfer of €8 billion that Spain’s central bank makes for depositing €250 billion of liquidity into facilitated deposit accounts, which represent 65% of the profits obtained by Spanish banks.” Martín requested detailed breakdowns by bank for this transfer.
On February 28th, Spain’s central bank issued an official response to Martín’s parliamentary question: “Information disaggregated by entities is subject to professional secrecy as established in Article 37 of European Central Bank (ECB) and Banco Central Europeo (BCE) Statutes and Article 82 of Law 10/2014 on Organizing Supervising and Solving Credit Entities.” Martín remembered this response but said he hoped “to hear it directly from Hernandez de Cos if we as citizens cannot know about public transfers made to banks; detail by detail by bank because apparently it is subject to professional secrecy that escapes me.” Hernandez de Cos repeated his stance in his official response: “Why can’t we provide individual data? We are subject to confidentiality [duties].”
Due to this new rejection, Sumar announced that it would report Spain’s central bank before the Administrative Court of Contests for failing to provide data on profits obtained from deposits.
