The preference for seeking out private solutions was naturally governed by the aim to minimise the impact for taxpayers; but another determinant here was the objective to undertake the necessary reform of savings banks, which were by then subject to well-known problems of governance, it being considered that a strategy of widespread public aid could set back or make this reform more difficult. The question hanging in the air is whether the alternative of strong public aid to credit institutions in the initial phases of the crisis would ultimately have entailed a lower fiscal cost than the gradual approach opted for. But this question is, as economists would say, counterfactual, i.e. attempting to imagine the consequences – desired and undesired alike – of something that did not happen. Whatever interest this question may have, naturally the Report does not go into it, and I do not believe it is for the Banco de España to respond to it. 10/14  A second question is why some of the savings bank IPSs did not withstand the double-dip recession and had to undertake further restructuring measures as from 2012. With hindsight, the IPSs were in most cases clearly but a prior step to necessary and actual mergers, and several of these groups were evidently insufficient when faced with the second recession. Yet it should be recalled that the IPSs were an instrument that provided for the integration of savings banks and of credit cooperatives, which had less flexibility to undertake true mergers.
At this juncture I should point out that, on reading these paragraphs, I am not forgetting the case of Banco Popular Español. The Report provides details on the results for this bank, and on the assessment made under the July 2012 Memorandum of Understanding with regard to our banks’ capital needs. As is known, this assessment was conducted by the consultancy firm Oliver Wyman, and its outcome was that Banco Popular evidenced capital needs in excess of € billion. But in October 2012 it was concluded that both Banco Popular, and the other institution for which capital needs have been identified, namely Ibercaja, could cover these needs by their own means, without resort to public funds and, therefore, also without transferring assets to Sareb. I believe the resolution of Banco Popular, undertaken early in June in accordance with the provisions of the 2014 European Directive, is set in a different context to that of the analysis of the crisis from 2008 to 2014, even if it is considered that the still-distant source of the problems of Banco Popular can be found in the period covered by the Report. But here I shall naturally defer to what this Commission should decide. Regarding public aid, the Report details in its various chapters the aid injected into the financial system during the crisis. This is summarised in Tables 5.5 and 5.6 (pp. 246-247).