- Credit Suisse crash puts European banks at the center of global financial storm
Credit Suisse has taken the lifeline that was thrown yesterday at the last minute by the Swiss central bank and the country's regulator Finma and has requested this morning a rescue of up to 50,000 million francs (about 50,700 million euros) after the stock market crash suffered yesterday in the markets. The news has been the signal that investors needed to ease the flight of the banking sector on the stock market waiting for the meeting this Thursday of the European Central Bank (ECB) and that is giving air to the price of the entities.
The shares of the Swiss company itself rebound almost 24% in the first minutes of trading, thus recovering practically everything lost on the eve. In this line, the European stock markets have opened with increases of more than 1.50% with the banks at the forefront of the increases. The Ibex 35, which yesterday fit its largest fall since November 2021 (-4.37%), rebounds around 1.5% in the first stages of the session and approaches 8,900 points. Within the selective, Santander leads the gains with an advance of 3.7%; CaixaBank and BBVA are close to 3%, while Unicaja and Banco Sabadell are around 2.5% increases.
The increases are even more pronounced in other European markets, where the Ftse Mib of Milan gains 2.21%. In Frankfurt, advances exceeded 1.5%, somewhat ahead of the Cac 40 in Paris, while London moves around 1.2%.
Volatility is the expected trend for today's session. All attention will be on the ECB meeting, which has shown for weeks its willingness to raise the price of money in the euro area by half a percentage point, by 50 basis points, to 3.5%.
The confirmation of that rise and, above all, the message that its president, Christine Lagarde, can launch, will finish defining the course of the day after the day of panic that was experienced on Wednesday.
After the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) last week in the US, the Credit Suisse crash yesterday shifted the focus of the stock market crisis from the US to Europe. Shares of the Swiss entity plunged more than 24% after the withdrawal of support from its main shareholder, the Saudi National Bank, and that gesture caused a domino effect in the rest of the regional banking sector.
The big banks suffered losses that in cases such as Sabadell exceeded 10%, dragged down by the uncertainty and fears of the ghost of Lehman Brothers. Analysts and experts insist that there is no reason to think about a new debacle of the magnitude of 2008, but the crisis of confidence in the system is already a reality and the next few days will be crucial to recover it.
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