US Financial Collapse Drags Down European Banks

On Friday, European financial institutions suffered a day of heavy losses on the stock market, dragged down by the crisis at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a U.S. institution specializing on startups in the technology and science sectors.

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At the close of operations, the Spanish market registered a pronounced drop in the Ibex 35 indicator, which reflected the losses of institutions such as Sabadell (5.11 percent), Bankinter (4.22 percent), Santander (4.21 percent), BBVA (3.41 percent), Unicaja (2.53 percent), and CaixaBank (1.8 percent).

In the United Kingdom, the FTSE-100 index lost 1.67 of its value at the end of the session. Among the banks with the biggest losses were HSBC (4.59 percent), Standard Chartered (4.54 percent), Barclays (3.67 percent), and Lloyds (3.27 percent).

In Frankfurt, the main German banks also registered sharp declines as a result of the fall of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed and Silvergate Bank was liquidated. The DAX index of the German stock market fell 1.3 percent at the close and losses were led by Deutsche Bank (6.22 percent), Commerzbank (1.3 percent).

French banks were also hit hard. At the end of the day on the stock market, the largest losses were experienced by Societe Generale (4.49 percent), BNP Paribas (3.82 percent), Credit Agricole (2.48 percent), and AXA insurance company (2.31 percent ).

On Wednesday, the Silicon Valley Bank carried out a forced sale of US$21 billion worth of securities, resulting in losses of some US$1.8 billion, which prompted a 60 percent drop in its shares on Wall Street.

U.S. financial regulators announced the closure of SVB due to lack of liquidity and insolvency. They also established measures to guarantee the protection of all deposits.