Yet while, as I have already said, much progress has been made in improving the resolution toolkit, the Banco de España needs to continue to be equipped with instruments to enable the performance of its supervisory tasks to be quick and simple rather than complicated and slow. For this purpose it would be desirable to transfer a significant part of the powers of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Competitiveness in relation to sanctioning, licensing, etc., to the Banco de España, in line with what the IMF has been suggesting for some time. Also, the FROB needs to be authorised to assume the powers of the shareholders in general meeting in relation to banks taken under official administration and legal requirements that delay asset and liability transfers need to be eliminated. As for the Banco de España, it should equip itself with supervisory instruments to ensure that problems can be promptly corrected and it should distance itself from a legalistic system that envisages official administration only as the very last resort, when all legal requirements have been violated. Also, although the Banco de España’s professional and collegiate decision-making structure – one of its valuable traditions – must be maintained, it needs to be documented further and made more systematic, and the information that has begun to be supplied on the Banco de España’s website needs to be expanded.
While the merit of what has been achieved should be accorded to many, allow me briefly to acknowledge the work of the staff of the Banco de España, and most specifically the body of bank examiners, economists, lawyers and the senior managers of the supervisory, regulatory and legal arms of the Bank, on whom the greatest burden has fallen in terms of implementing the strategy approved in legislation. The fact is, the task discharged by them has perforce been complex and time-consuming. The decision by the authorities – previous and present alike – to use limited public funds in the reconstruction of the banking system was warranted because the big Spanish banks did not and do not need help and because, given the delicate situation of our country’s public finances then and now, the impact on the markets of a sharp and sudden increase in the budget deficit might have led to the collapse or intervention of the entire Spanish economy, as indeed occurred in some other countries. But with this strategy of minimising the use of public resources, the restructuring work increases exponentially and extends over time. The Spanish supervisor has had no “bad bank” with which to restructure the sector. Here we have not seen a State which, armed with taxpayers’ money, has bought bad assets from banks, thereby resolving all supervised banks’ problems at a stroke. Our Bank’s supervisory team has had to apply a strategy which has obliged it to seek predominantly private solutions.