Argentina to Start Closing Banks
Argentina plans to start closing the weakest of the nation’s 87 banks as early as next month and merge others as the government prepares to lift restrictions on withdrawals and money transfers.
A new state agency will begin assessing which banks to let fail after the April 15 deadline for depositors to decide whether to convert frozen savings into new government bonds, Finance Secretary Lisandro Barry said.
Banks in Argentina face tens of billions of dollars of losses because of the government’s default on $95 billion of bonds and devaluation of the peso.
It is too early to forecast how many banks may collapse. The central bank already has backed a plan to bail out the nation’s biggest publicly traded bank, Banco de Galicia y Buenos Aires.
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