(Bloomberg) — Banco Santander SA has become the first bank currently in the European Union in almost a decade to be valued at more than €100 billion ($108 billion) as investors increasingly pile into the sector.
The Spanish lender’s shares rose 1.8% to €6.62 on Tuesday, pushing its market capitalization to €100.3 billion. The last time a bank currently in the European Union closed a trading day at that level was in 2015 — when Santander previously was at that mark.
The share prices of Europe’s banks have been soaring in recent years after the European Central Bank ended a period of negative interest rates in 2022, giving a massive boost to bank profitability. The bloc’s lenders have since stepped up investor payouts.
Santander is currently the only EU bank to exceed €100 billion in market capitalization, but various other lenders including BNP Paribas SA and Intesa Sanpaolo SpA aren’t far behind.
Beyond the EU, Switzerland’s UBS Group AG has a higher market value. London-based lender HSBC Holdings Plc traded above that mark as well in recent years, including in the period leading up to Brexit.
While the ECB last year started reversing some of the rate cuts, the more recent specter of massive public spending in Europe has given a fresh boost to bank stocks. The region’s banks recently had their best winning streak since before the turn of the millennium.
“We retain our positive view on the European banks sector following our initial assessment of the fiscal announcements across Europe, led by Germany and the EU,” JPMorgan analysts including Kian Abouhossein and Delphine Lee said in a note on Tuesday.
Santander’s stock previously trailed the sector, but its shares have rallied close to 50% since the beginning of this year. That has made the lender one of the best performers across European banking year-to-date.
Like many of its competitors, Spain’s biggest bank recently unveiled fresh plans to step up the amount of money it intends to return to investors. Chairman Ana Botin said in a Bloomberg TV interview earlier this month that the bank’s growth focus will be on the Americas.
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