Sareb Confirms Javier García Del Río As New President

As announced at the beginning of the month, the board of directors of Sareb , the bad bank that received the toxic real estate assets of the banks rescued in the previous crisis, has unanimously approved this Wednesday the appointment of its hitherto CEO, Javier García del Río , as the new president to replace Jaime Echegoyen , who submitted his voluntary resignation “for personal reasons” three weeks ago .

García del Río, who joined the company in February 2020 as deputy general director to the president and was appointed CEO in October, is an industrial engineer from the ETS de Ingenieros de Sevilla and has “extensive experience in the recovery and implementation of value of non-performing loan portfolios (NPL) and real estate assets, “according to the company in a note

“At Sareb we face this new stage with renewed responsibility in order to maximize the capacity to generate cash and pay off the debt guaranteed by the State . We will continue to pursue this goal with expert management and efficient spending.

This economic objective must be compatible with the social utility of our activity, obtained through the retail sale – to individuals and industrial companies – of our assets, and also the development of partnerships in the field of affordable and social housing ”, the executive

On the other hand, the Sareb shareholders’ meeting held this Wednesday has approved the 2020 accounts (1,073 million euros in losses, 13.3% more) and has given the green light to the conversion into capital of 1,430 million euros of subordinated debt to avoid being in a negative equity situation. After this operation, the firm’s own resources stood at 587 million euros of capital at the end of 2020.

Accumulated losses
The change at the top comes a few weeks after Eurostat, the community statistical office, forced Spain to include Sareb within the public sector. This has raised public debt by about 35,000 million euros and has caused the financial aid item for the 2020 deficit to rise to 9,878 million .

As a consequence of this, the Government is negotiating with the other shareholders of the firm, mainly banks, to take full control of the company, of which the State is the first shareholder but with a 45.9% stake, according to what he advanced ‘ The confidential’.

The company accumulates losses in all its years of life, despite the fact that the Rajoy Executive assured that it would have an average annual profitability of 13%. From the beginning it was proven to be false .

The main problem is that the more than 200,000 assets he received were valued by Oliver Wyman at an excessive price, which benefited the nationalized banks, since it avoided causing an equity hole even greater than they already suffered, but it has hurt the bad bank , which has been unable to sell its loans and properties at market prices to avoid suffering even greater losses.

The current government, in fact, has opened the door to extend its life beyond the closing in 2027 to prevent the bill for public accounts from rising further.