Regulating Spanish Banking, 1939–1975 (Studies in Banking and Financial History) - Hardcover

Brias, Maria Angeles Pons

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0754601943 ISBN 13: 9780754601944

Publisher: Routledge, 2002

Synopsis

Banking regulation has been the subject of intense debate in recent years. This book contributes to that debate in its study of the impact of financial regulation on Spanish banking performance, especially profitability, from the end of the Spanish Civil War to the end of the Franco regime. Maria Pons discusses the Francoist authorities' policy of forced industrialization based on heavy industry, and the huge interventionist apparatus that it set up to involve banks in its industrialistic programme. This included several items of banking legislation related to the fixing of interest rates, the expansion of the sector, mergers and so forth. Pons explains the emergence of this regulatory framework and its development to the mid-1970s, as well as examining in detail the response of the Spanish banks to these regulations, and their attempts to take advantage of the opportunities they offered to reduce competition and uncertainty. The book also analyzes the 1962 reforms and subsequent legizlation and the lack of success they had in reducing public intervention in the banking sector.

About this title

Review:

'This work is definitively a qualitative leap in Spanish banking literature, since it provides a theoretical bench-mark that affords a revision of some of the little-known topics regarding the banking regulations of Franco's regime, particularly their reasons and their effects. Not only because of its theoretical proposal, but also due to its use of indicators that demonstrate that the regulation was neither uniform, nor had any similar effects on the banking industry, this book is a valuable reference for understanding the economic policy of the regime as well as the evolution of the Spanish banking industry.' Business History

Synopsis:

The main purpose of this study is to examine the impact of financial regulation on the Spanish banking system performance from the end of the Civil War (April 1939) to the mid-1970s. The changes in the banking regulatory framework - the pre-war situation, the period of strongest financial restriction in Spain between 1939-1962, and the reform efforts between 1962 and 1975 - offer an instructive case study. The first part of the book discusses the reasons for regulation: why the Franco government maintained a very restrictive banking regulatory framework. It provides a general view of the Spanish economy from the end of the Civil War to the 1970s, and analyzes the main political and economic choices made by the Franco regime and the consequences of their decisions. The next part of the book assesses the results of intervention, by looking at how factors external to the banking system influenced its behaviour. The final part of the study examines the idea that regulation affects firms not through profitability but through risk, and develops an explanation of how regulation affected financial markets.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0754601943
• ISBN 13: 9780754601944
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264