Spain’s Bankia Decimates Savers As Stock Plummets; Police Officer Stabs Banker Who Sold Him Shares
Forbes.com
5/28/2013
While investors across the globe applaud Bernanke and other central bankers for pushing stock markets to record highs, retail investors and savers in Spain are facing massive losses. Markets appear to have forgotten Europe’s sovereign debt crisis and the woes in Spain: on Tuesday, new shares in nationalized financial institution Bankia began trading, closing the day at €0.57 ($0.74), marking a more than 80% drop from their floating price in 2011 when the banking group was formed. The average Spaniard is suffering, and the situation has gotten to the point where on Sunday, a police officer stabbed a former Bankia employee four times after a heated discussion related to the sale of preferred shares in the failed banking group.
It’s not pretty in Spain these days. A contracting economy and a spiraling unemployment rate are taking its toll on the population. And few things can illustrate that as well as Bankia, the nationalized financial group that is currently the fourth largest bank in Spain by market capitalization.
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