Xinhua, Madrid :
The BBVA will pay 1,187 million euros for the Catalunya Banc after winning the auction organized by Spain’s Fund for the Ordered Banking Reconstruction Fund (FROB), it was confirmed Tuesday morning.
The BBVA beat offers by Banco Santander and CaixaBank to buy out the crisis hit entity in a sale which sees the Spanish state lose 11.43 billion euros.
All three banks had made offers last Friday to buy Catalunya Banc, which has received over 13.6 million euros of public money since the start of the economic crisis.
The sale brings an end to the troubled history of Catalunya Banc, which was formed by the fusion of Caixa Catalunya, Tarragona and Manresa and which requested public aid from the moment of its creation and which continued needing public money until last week when the state was obliged to contribute a further 522 million euros in order to allow Catalunya Banc to shed 6.4 billion euros of toxic assets, which would otherwise have made Tuesday’s sale impossible.
Meanwhile the purchase will allow BBVA to increase its presence in the Catalan region in the north of Spain, where it will be able to compete on a more even footing with the local CaixaBank.
