Spain's Bankia to receive immediate aid

(CBS/AP) MADRID - Spain's bank rescue fund is to inject government aid immediately into Bankia after the troubled lender announced losses of roughly $5.5 billion in the first half of the year, the fund said Friday.

The fund for the orderly restructuring of banks, or FROB, said in a statement late Friday that it planned to inject capital into Bankia SA and its parent group Banco Financiero y de Ahorros SA with immediate effect after "the accounts declared significant losses."

The fund did not specify how much money it would inject, but said it was part of Bankia's restructuring and was an advance prior to Spain receiving up to $126.1 billion in bank bailout funds from the other 16 countries that use the euro.

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Bankia was nationalized in May and has called for about $30.2 billion in public aid.

At its Friday cabinet meeting, Spain's government approved a new package of measures to create a "bad bank" to handle the country's toxic property investments and give the central bank more powers to shut down troubled lenders.

The reform is the fifth such package Spain has introduced since its financial difficulties began in 2008.

Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said the new "bad bank" would be up and running by the end of November and will be controlled by the central bank but would also involve the private sector.

He said the measure was chiefly aimed at unburdening banks of their bad investments so they can concentrate on managing people's savings and investments and get credit flowing again into the ailing economy. The bad bank would be able to bring some of the real estate assets - such as unused land and unsold houses - back onto the market.

The reform comes as Spain battles to convince investors it can handle its finances and avoid following Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus in requesting a government bailout.

Spain's banks have an estimated $232 billion in problematic real estate loans and investments since the collapse of the country's property market in 2008.

De Guindos gave no indication as to how much or what type of toxic assets the new bank would take on or at what discount they would be bought from the troubled banks. The creation of the bad bank was among conditions of the eurozone's loan package.

The Minister did say the new institution would have between 10 and 15 years to sell off those assets and the Bank of Spain would decide the value of the toxic assets.

"We're laying the basis to avoid a repetition of such a crisis in the future," the minister said at a news conference after a Cabinet meeting.

De Guindos said that given that the new entity would only be dealing with those banks that have been bailed out, it would be managing a figure considerably smaller than $232 billion, though he declined to say how much it would amount to. So far, eight banks have been taken over.

Analysts were not immediately impressed and said the reforms were short on detail.

"The reform is a step in the right direction but there is still a lot to do," said Carles Vergara, Professor of Financial Management at Barcelona's IESE Business School.

The markets responded with mixed results as the IBEX-35 rose 3.13 percent but Spain's benchmark 10-year bond rate also went up 0.28 to 6.83 percent at close of trading Friday.

Spain's "bad bank" will be the eurozone's second - the first was set up by Ireland in 2009.

However, Irelands's National Asset Management Agency or NAMA, has not been the success it was billed to be as soaring bank-rescue costs ruined the country's creditworthiness and forced it to negotiate an EU-IMF loan rescue in November 2010.

NAMA paid its banks roughly $38 billion in government-backed bonds for assets originally valued around $93 billion, forcing the banks to book about $55 billion in loan write-offs - which led to more rescues.

By 2011, NAMA reported a profit of about $310 million as it cashed in some of the best of the property it seized from the U.K. and the U.S. But the state-owned agency plans to hold most Irish properties and development sites for up to a decade in hopes that the market will rebound first. It originally envisaged around $1.2 billion profit over its expected decade-long lifetime, but now says a break-even is more likely. Analysts expect losses.

De Guindos said Spain's new institution would be financed mostly by private investment with additional money from Spain's bank restructuring fund, or FROB. He said only a small amount would come from the eurozone aid package.

De Guindos also announced the Bank of Spain would be given greater powers to intervene in earlier - and close down if necessary - banks with financial problems. The central bank would be able to intervene in banks that meet solvency requirements but are uncertain of fulfilling them in the future.

He said that in line with European banking rules, the government was raising the core capital requirements - the level of high-quality assets a lender has to hold to protect it from economic shocks - to 9 percent for all banks.

Results of a comprehensive audit of all Spanish banks are expected next month.

The reforms come as Spain got yet another dose of bad news Friday as the Bank of Spain reported a net capital outflow of slightly more than $71 billion in June, topping an exit of nearly $52 billion in May.

It said the outflow for the first six months of 2012 was nearly $277 billion, compared with an intake of roughly $28 billion for the same period last year.