Fixing Spain’s Savings Banks Means Paying Workers to Play Golf
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Spain cut civil servants’ pay and froze pensions as part of an austerity drive to reduce its deficit, the third-highest in the region that uses the euro. Laid-off savings banks workers will fare better.
The central bank has coaxed ailing savings banks to merge, financing the process with more than 10 billion euros ($12.9 billion) from a government bailout fund. Consolidating the lenders, known as “cajas,” may eventually cost as many as 50,000 jobs, with many workers taking early retirement, said Carlos Trascasa, a partner at McKinsey & Co.