Court orders Bankinter to repay client's Iceland losses

The provincial court of Murcia confirmed a ruling by a lower court condemning Bankinter to pay one of its clients 58,000 eurofor failing to inform her of the risk involved in investing in Bank of Iceland shares. A Cartagena court had ordered the bank to return the equivalent of what the plaintiff had invested. Bankinter appealed the decision, but the provincial court ruled that the bank had failed in its duty to disclose all the information stipulated by law.

The obligation to inform "must especially cover the specific risks of said investment" and the bank cannot merely "make a brief description of the product in which the returns are highlighted while the risks are underplayed," said the ruling.

The judge said that the contract between the bank and the client "did not expressly indicate the possibility that the client could partially or wholly lose the invested capital, and limited itself to making references to emission ratings that, due to their technical nature, can only be properly interpreted by professional investors or other people with a developed financial culture."