Some, and not just fortunate investors in TSB, may wonder why Spain should now have bought into two leading British retail banks. Santander’s bright red frontage is a common enough sight after it bought and converted Abbey National. Sabadell’s corporate colour is a rather fetching French blue, though this is unlikely to become so familiar because the intention, rightly, is to keep the venerable TSB name.
Spain is, after all, known as one of the Pigs, the financial basket cases of the eurozone. Before the crisis, purchases such as Ferrovial’s of various British airports were driven by tax advantages. These are no longer there, but under Spanish accounting rules, banks there can lump together the capital held in subsidiaries elsewhere and that held in that