'caixabank'

Barcelona will become the first European city with the contactless payment system installed

January 13, 2012 01:17 AM | CNA

CaixaBank and Visa Europe will begin installing the system enabling “contactless payments” to be made throughout Barcelona. The system consists of paying for goods valued at less than €20 by passing a special credit card in front of a sensor, with no need of actually introducing the card anywhere or typing any code. The system will become fully operational to coincide with the Mobile World Congress, which starts on February 27th. Barcelona will be the first city in Europe where the contactless payment method can be used, ahead of London, which aims to have it ready for the Olympics this summer.

CaixaBank has a net profit of 845 million euros for the first 9 months of 2011

November 4, 2011 10:44 PM | CNA

The main Catalan bank allocated 1.953 billion euros for insolvencies and raised its core capital to 11.8%, 2.9 percentage points more than the ratio it had in December 2010. These operations made their net profit decrease by 16.6% compared to the previous year. Besides, CaixaBank announced that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim will quit its board to rejoin that of the bank’s industrial holding ‘Criteria CaixaHolding’. Slim’s seat will be occupied by former Chairman of Citigroup and the New York Stock Exchange John S. Reed.

Spanish banks will use their own resources to get the 26,121 million euros needed according to the new rules

October 27, 2011 11:43 PM | CNA

The Spanish stock exchange celebrated the European Summit’s results by increasing 4.96% in a one day of trading. The main managers of the Spanish banks are convinced they will get the requested core capital with their own resources. In addition, they believe they will need 13.5 billion euros, and not 26.1 once the detailed calculations are made. Spanish financial circles consider the new rules, adopted to counteract French and German banks’ exposition to Greek sovereign debt, do not particularly benefit Spanish banks, which almost do not hold any Greek debt. In addition, as was the case with the stress tests, the criteria to analyse the bank situation ignores Spain’s proposals and imposes those benefiting German banks.

CaixaBank buys Bankpime’s banking and fund management business

September 30, 2011 10:28 PM | CNA

Barcelona-based CaixaBank, the private bank of ‘La Caixa’, will pay 16 million euros for the purchase of both businesses. Bankpime is a bank for small and medium-sized companies. CaixaBank will control a total volume of 1,200 million euros. CaixaBank will buy Bankpime’s credit investment portfolio -which is worth 363 million euros-, the fund management business –with some 400 million euros traded, the 19 branches of the bank, and client deposits worth some 436 million euros.

Two Catalan banks fail the stress tests in worst case scenarios but would be approved if all provisions would have been taken into account

July 15, 2011 11:44 PM | CNA

Unnim and CatalunyaCaixa would have 4.5% and 4.8% of core capital respectively. However, the provisions that all Spanish banks must have to face difficult times have not been taken into account as they did not exist in other European banking systems. With these funds taken into account, Unnim and CatalunyaCaixa would have approved the tests with 6.2% and 6.3% respectively. CaixaBank, the most important Catalan bank passes the test with 6.4%.

CaixaBank begins its trading on the stock exchange and Moody’s improves its rating

July 2, 2011 06:51 PM | CNA / Gaspar Pericay Coll

The new bank becomes Spain’s third financial institution for its stock exchange value and the ninth in the Ibex-35 Spanish index. CaixaBank is the result of Barcelona-based savings bank La Caixa’s transformation into a private bank in order to strengthen its structure and position in the market, after the sector restructuration. The day CaixaBank was listed for the first time on the stock exchange, the rating agency Moody’s improved CaixaBank’s appreciation. However, after an initial increase CaixaBank’s value dropped by 1.1%. It is the first Spanish savings bank that concludes its transformation and trade on the stock exchange.

CaixaBank, the new retail bank by La Caixa, will start trading in the Stock Exchange on July 1st

May 13, 2011 01:48 AM | CNA / Gaspar Pericay Coll

The transformation of the savings bank La Caixa’s industrial holding, Criteria into the private bank CaixaBank is reaching the final stage. Criteria’s stockholder board approved duplicating the current stocks by issuing 300,000 convertible bonds. The new bank expects increasing its market share in Spain by 50% through business activity increase and new acquisitions in the period 2011-2014. The announcement is made the day after billionaire Carlos Slim bought 900,000 CaixaBank stocks.

CatalunyaCaixa’s announcement to become a bank puts an end to all the savings banks in Catalonia

February 3, 2011 12:29 AM | CNA / Gaspar Pericay Coll

All the Catalan savings banks are in the process of becoming regular banks. In the last 6 days, all the savings banks have been defining their future and they are all going in the same direction: transforming their structures into those of a regular bank. The first stage was the merging process that took place before summertime and now, with the new banking rules at international, European and Spanish level, savings banks are finding it easier to continue operating as regular banks. The old model is thus finished.