STOCK MARKET WATCH - Tuesday, 31 January 2012

[Ghost Dog]

19. Santander Net Slumps on Real-Estate Charges

Banco Santander SA (SAN), Spain’s biggest lender, said fourth-quarter profit plunged as it anticipated tougher rules on recognizing real-estate losses at home and earnings declined in the U.K. and Brazil. (SANB11)

Net income fell to 47 million euros ($61.9 million) from 2.1 billion euros a year earlier, the bank said in a filing to regulators today. That compared with the average 1.78 billion- euro forecast in a Bloomberg survey of 10 analysts.

Santander and other Spanish banks are under pressure from Mariano Rajoy’s new government to recognize more losses on building land and apartments that have piled up on their balance sheets as a result of the country’s real-estate crash. The lender booked 1.81 billion euros in charges for Spanish real- estate provisions and a 600 million-euro goodwill charge at its Portuguese unit as profit sagged in its biggest markets.

“People do want to see these risks provisioned for properly and the sooner the better,” said Daragh Quinn, an analyst at Nomura International in Madrid, referring to the bank’s Spanish real-estate assets.

Santander climbed 1.1 percent to 6.05 euros as of 9:20 a.m. in Madrid trading, bringing this year’s gain to 3.1 percent and valuing the lender at 55.1 billion euros...

/... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/santander-net-slumps-more-than-estimated-on-real-estate-charges-in-spain.html

Santander behaving the way banks should.