Puerto Rico has a small banking system with total assets of $95.7bn and just 11 commercial banks. Among these, one is owned by Canada's Scotiabank and two are owned by Spain's Santander and BBVA banking groups. Relative to the island's economy, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of about $85bn, the banking industry is significant, although it is in the throes of a major crisis.
Ricardo Carrión, president of Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, the island's oldest and biggest bank, with a 22% share of the loan market and a 32% share of the system's deposits, called the current crisis "the worst in living memory". The Popular group was hit with huge losses in the US where it had an enormous exposure to toxic subprime mortgage assets, largely through a wholesale subprime mortgage company, Popular Financial Holdings, which has been shut down. This is in addition to an exposure of about $4.4bn in troubled Puerto Rican real estate loans.
