Spanish banks lose 3,100 million in value on the stock market after Meloni's surprise tax on the sector in Italy

The latest earthquake that has hit the European banking sector has its epicenter in Italy. The government of the far-right Giorgia Meloni has unexpectedly approved a new tax that will tax the extraordinary profits of the country's entities with 40%. The news has taken the banks themselves, the markets and investors by surprise and out of the game, which on Tuesday have applied a harsh corrective to the European financial sector in the face of doubts about the effects that the tax may have and fear of that other countries join Italy and Spain in the creation of a similar figure.

The Italian entities have been the most punished with collapses that reached 8.67% in cases such as that of Intesa Sanpaolo or 5.9% of Unicredit, but the Spanish have not escaped the punishment either. The six large banks present in the Ibex 35 have accumulated losses of 3,160 million euros in their joint capitalization, with Santander (-2.7%) and Unicaja (-2.45%) leading the declines.

Banco Sabadell has also dropped 2.16% in this session (132 million euros of valuation); BBVA, 1.9% (799 million euros of valuation); Bankinter, 1.87% (103 million euros of valuation) and CaixaBank, 1.5% (451 million euros). The strong weight that the financial sector accumulates in the Ibex 35 is behind the decrease of 0.68% that the index has initialed at the end of the session (9,294 points).

The tax created by the Italian Executive will tax the extraordinary profits recorded by the country's banks with 40%, the collection of which will be used to help the mortgaged and reduce the tax burden of citizens. “The Council of Ministers approved a social equity rule that is a tax on extra bank profits in 2023,” the Vice President of the Government of Italy and Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Matteo Salvini, announced at a press conference..

In his presentation, Salvini has defended the introduction of the extraordinary tax on banks because the rise in interest rates as a result of the tightening of the monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB) has led to an increase in the cost of money for families and companies , “but there hasn't been an equally rapid, assiduous and significant rise in the number of consumers who have deposits in checking accounts.”

Without wanting to go into assessing the potential collection of the tax, the Italian minister has said that “it is enough to look at the first half of 2023 of the banks” to understand that we are not talking about a handful of millions, but a few billion. Subsequently, in a message posted on his account on the X social network, formerly known as Twitter, Salvini wrote that the new tax intends to “use part of the millions of bank profits to help families and companies affected by the rise in types” and that it is “a common sense rule approved by the Council of Ministers to support those who are in difficulties”.

As explained by Italian media, the rule, included by surprise in the omnibus decree approved at the meeting of the Council of Ministers held late on Monday, contemplates the activation of the 40% tax when the interest margin registered in 2023 exceeds a percentage .

The new tax has taken investors and analysts by surprise who, in the absence of knowing more details about its application, assure that it represents “a significant increase in taxation that reduces the generation of capital in the sector and generates regulatory uncertainty”, as they point out. from Bankinter's Analysis Department.

The tax figure follows in the wake of other similar taxes that are already in force, as is the case in Spain. The Government of Pedro Sánchez approved in the last legislature a rate that will tax the extraordinary profits of national banks in the years 2023 and 2024, whose application came into force on January 1. The entities of the country have already carried out the first of the corresponding payments but all of them have presented an appeal with which they intend to annul the lien.

The Vice President of the Government, Nadia Calviño, assured that after the application period, the socialist plans (in the event of forming a new Government) would go through analyzing the continuity of the rate and Juan Bravo, the spokesman, stated in the same vein of the PP, barely a month before the holding of the elections on 23-J.