The Vice President of the European Investment Bank Meets with Key Leaders of the Spanish Financial Sector

Román Escolano, Vice President of the European Investment Bank, analyzes the opportunities that the Investment Plan for Europe offers to the Spanish economy in a financial meeting organized jointly by CECA and AEB

The Vice President of the European Investment Bank, Román Escolano, featured today in the fourth edition of the Financial Meeting promoted jointly by CECA and AEB, aimed at connecting the Spanish financial industry with personalities from European institutions. This time, the meeting, held in CECA’s Madrid headquarters, gathered more than a hundred professionals, including representatives from regulatory and supervisory authorities, executives from the sector, and other participants from the financial industry.

In his speech, Román Escolano defined the Investment Plan for Europe as “a tool designed to give a strong boost to investment in Europe. The aim of this Plan is to mobilize a volume of additional investments worth a total of 315 billion euros by 2018.”

Moreover, he stated that “the novelty of EFSI (‘European Fund for Strategic Investments’) lies in the fact that now the EIB can take on more risks in projects and on a much larger scale than it has been able to do so far, and this without questioning its business model and its top credit rating.”

Regarding the opportunities for companies looking to appeal to these instruments, he indicated that “like all loan operations financed by the EIB, projects requiring funding under EFSI will be carefully selected based on their viability and technical, financial, and environmental specifications.”

In his initial address, José María Méndez, General Director of CECA and independent expert advisor to the EIB, highlighted the important dynamic role of this institution, given that “in the last six years it has invested 61 billion euros in the Spanish economy.” He also emphasized the “opportunities that the Juncker Plan represents for Spanish SMEs,” confirmed by the fact that “in 2015 they received more than 8 billion euros from the EIB.”

For his part, the President of AEB, José María Roldán, stressed the increasing participation of Spanish banking entities in the initiatives of the EIB Group. He specifically referred to two projects, one called “SME Initiative,” through which the EIF (European Investment Fund) has reached bilateral agreements with major banks to finance, for the first time, projects under the risk-sharing formula, a shared risk modality between financing banks and the EIF. He also mentioned that “Spanish banks have begun to develop an intense program of contacts and working meetings with the EIB, aiming to quickly launch the EFSI initiative.”