The European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, plans to hold a bilateral meeting today by video conference with Ana Botín, President of Santander.

The meeting between Botín and Breton forms part of the conversations they hold every year on the configuration of the European banking sector in the current environment, according to the sources consulted, as explained to Europa Press.

The European Commissioner met yesterday by video conference with two other senior business executives. They are the CEO of Nokia, Pekka Lundmark, and the chief executive of Ebay, Jamie Iannone.

Breton’s agenda also included a video conference yesterday with the Third Vice-President and Minister of Economic Affairs, Nadia Calviño, although the European Commission has indicated that this event was cancelled.

Consolidation

The Spanish banking market has proved to be one of the most active in the merger process, following the ECB’s recommendations.

In three and a half months two operations have already crystallised: the takeover of Bankia by CaixaBank and that of Liberbank by Unicaja.

In the autumn talks took place between BBVA and Sabadell, but they broke down after three weeks because the economic positions were very far apart (there was a difference of 500 million euros). In the market it is not ruled out that these contacts will be resumed or that Santander will end up taking an interest in Sabadell.

Source: El Confidencial.