Pablo Hernández de Cos: Risks and vulnerabilities in the corporate sector as a result of the COVID-19 crisis: the experience of Spain

Speech by Mr Pablo Hernández de Cos, Governor of the Bank of Spain and Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, at the 5th annual onlinevconference on "How to spend it? How to pay it back? EU and US Perspectives", organized bySUERF · CGEG|COLUMBIA|SIPA · EIB · SOCIETE GENERAL, 14 October 2020.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Central bank speech  | 
15 October 2020

Ladies and gentlemen, I wish you a good morning or good afternoon, depending on your time zone. First of all, let me thank the organisers for their kind invitation to participate in this conference.

My presentation will focus on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the risks and vulnerabilities of non-financial corporate sector, the role played by policies in tackling these risks and the main challenges ahead. I will illustrate these vulnerabilities and challenges focusing on the Spanish case.

This discussion is very relevant since the activity of the corporate sector has been particularly hit by the crisis and indeed many of the policy measures applied have focused on supporting the viability of firms which, despite being solvent, have seen their liquidity position deteriorate as a consequence of the crisis.

The swift implementation of these policies is being and will continue to be crucial to prevent the temporary shock of the pandemic turning into the closure of many firms and therefore into a permanent loss of productive capacity.