About €30bn of such products were sold to individual savers before the crisis by small Spanish banks, according to estimates by Barclays, while about 60 per cent of subordinated bank debt is held by retail clients, excluding Santander and BBVA.
Numerous legal cases have since been brought by Spanish banks clients who allege they were mis-sold risky products as secure deposits, while Luis de Guindos, finance minister, has previously said it was an error that preference shares were ever sold to retail investors.
08.42 In the UK, out of the blue, inflation jumped up to 2.6pc - although this is widely thought to be but a blip on an otherwise downward trajectory, possibly brought on by larger-than-expected fall in the previous month. Only time will tell.
Nonetheless, as Philip Aldrick writes in this morning's Daily Telegraph, Sir Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, must be ruing his comments last week, when he virtually declared the threat of inflation over:
08.38 We had a clump of growth figures out yesterday, ranging from good news to neutral to bad: Germany's economy defied the downturn to grow 0.3pc in the second quarter, while France was stagnant for the third consecutive quarter and the eurozone as a whole contracted 0.2pc.
08.30 Good morning and welcome back to our live coverage of the European debt crisis.
