Pedro Luis Uriarte is not a man to mince his words. When asked at a recent meeting with analysts in London what he saw as the way forward for Spanish banking in the context of a single-currency Europe, the 55-year-old chief executive of Banco Bilbao Vizcaya (BBV), the country's biggest bank, casually said he thought it would be a good idea to merge with arch-rival Banco Santander.
April 01, 1998