This news was revealed in a statement from the European Union’s Single Resolution Board (SRB). The decision, endorsed by the European Commission, was taken a week after Banco Popular’s shares plummeted. Around 300,000 investors were impacted, losing 100% of their investment.
The bank was founded using capital from Emilio González-Llana Fagoaga, a mining engineer who had also held positions as a member of the Conservative Party and would be its first president. At the bank’s opening, King Alfonso XIII obtained 500 shares in Banco Popular, with another 500 for his family, which was passed on to Don Juan de Borbón and Princess Esperanza de Borbón y Orleans. It obtained its name “Banco Popular Español” in 1947. At this time, industrialist Felix Millet i Maristany had taken control of the bank with Juan Manuel Fanjul Sedeño as his right-hand man. Thus had begun the rise of Opus Dei within the bank.
During the 1950s, the Valls brothers, Luis and Javier, played a key role in the bank’s expansion. Luis’s friendship with the Minister of Commerce, Alberto Ullastres, helped create an opening for the export of oranges and import of cellulose, which brought in huge profits for the bank. During the dictatorship, the bank created its industrial banking and financial leasing subsidiaries and opened its first offices outside of Spain (in France) in 1968.
In 1974, the bank began to expand throughout Spain; in 1986, with Spain’s entry into the EU, Popular allied itself with various regional institutions. At the time, it was said that “Popular was the Spanish stock market.” The bank, however, reached its peak in 2007, just before the financial crisis, with a valuation of EUR 20 million. The bank attempted to overcome its subsequent fall with measures such as selling its French subsidiary and acquiring regional banks; however, its real estate risk continued to weigh on it.
