The twilight years of the Spanish cajas: governance, risk behavior and growth on the eve of the crisis

• Autores: Martí Sagarra García
• Directores de la Tesis: Miguel Ángel García Cestona (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2014
• Idioma: inglés
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Vicente Salas Fumás (presid.), Francisco Javier Callealta Barroso (secret.), Aleksandra Gregorič (voc.)
• Materias:
  • Ciencias económicas
    • Actividad económica
      • Dinero y operaciones bancarias
    • Economía sectorial
      • Finanzas y seguros
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en:  TDX  DDD 
• Resumen

  • The Spanish financial system has been severely affected by the 2007¿2008 crisis. In particular, the Spanish savings banks (Cajas de Ahorros, or Cajas), an ownerless type of bank that used to constitute half of the financial system, have practically disappeared by the end of 2012. Certainly this collapse has been preceded by large failures in other countries¿ financial systems, but we are convinced that some important and novel lessons can still be extracted from the differential elements present in the Spanish case. First of all, and in spite of their lack of owners, Spanish savings banks were apparently in great financial condition and growing steadily before the last financial crisis. In fact, their governance structure allowed them to gain market share, since the 80¿s, from commercial banks, which were big and internationally competitive organizations subject to the usual market mechanisms for corporate control. Second, although market competition was in place, it seems that it was not enough to discipline the Cajas' behaviour in those boom years. In fact, the presence of an intense competition encouraged many of the Cajas (interestingly, with some important exceptions) to get involved in very expansive policies and questionable investments, demanding resources much beyond their own internal possibilities. Somehow, many savings banks competed and started to behave like large commercial banks, disregarding their limitations to raise new capital from the markets. As a result, from the original 45 Savings banks existing in 2008, only 12 of them remained by the end of 2012. On top of that, they have been transformed into commercial banks and their final number will be even lower, through mergers, with some additional moves still to come. What was special about the Cajas? What did it happen to them during the crisis? And why? The main goal of this Thesis is to achieve a better understanding of the particular nature of the Cajas, analyzing their behaviour and performance, and compare this with their most direct competitors (i.e., the Spanish commercial banks) using a long enough period that includes both a boom period and the years of the crisis. We believe that such approach will help us to answer the questions mentioned above, adding new elements to a debate that has been really extensive but not exhausted. Nonetheless, a debate on the Cajas fall has rarely gone beyond the political and public media spheres, where simple arguments such as the politicization have been pointed out as the unique source of the problem. The lack of academic work analyzing this relevant topic in an in-depth manner is noticeable. Thus, the purpose of this Thesis is to analyze the Cajas under several although related (and quite differentiated) angles in order to grasp the underlying nature of their large financial distress and later disappearance. We consider that this differentiated approach to a complex problem will allow us a broader and more innovative interpretation of the different events and behaviours involved.