by Ekrem Duman | Sep 1, 2026 | Spain Banking & Finance, Startup
⚡ TL;DRSpain went through the most dramatic banking consolidation in modern Europe. A system of dozens of politically governed regional savings banks, heavily exposed to a property bubble, collapsed after 2008 and was rebuilt into roughly ten significant...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 1, 2026 | Spain Banking & Finance, Startup
⚡ TL;DRBanco Sabadell was founded in 1881 by textile industrialists in the Catalan town of the same name, and its defining characteristic remains the same: it is a bank owned substantially by the people and businesses that use it. Roughly 41% of its shareholder...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 1, 2026 | Spain Banking & Finance, Startup
⚡ TL;DRCaixaBank is the largest bank in Spain by domestic market share, built from a savings bank founded to serve pensions and social welfare and transformed by the absorption of Bankia in 2021. In 2025 it reported net profit of €5.89bn, up 1.8%, on gross...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 1, 2026 | Spain Banking & Finance, Startup
⚡ TL;DRSantander is the largest bank in the eurozone by market value and the only European lender with a genuinely global retail footprint. In 2025 it reported attributable profit of €14,101m, up 12%, its fourth consecutive record year, with customers...
by Ekrem Duman | Sep 1, 2026 | Spain Banking & Finance, Startup
⚡ TL;DRBBVA’s hostile takeover of Banco Sabadell was the largest European banking deal attempted in years and it failed completely. After 17 months, a government-imposed three-year ban on merging operations, and a sweetened final offer, only 25.47% of...
