This area contains very different kinds of businesses: the activities and earnings of support units as well as certain items that cannot be allocated to other group business areas.

The increase of net trading income to 333 million euros (41.2% up on the previous year) was the result of active management of the structural interest-rate risk portfolio and the positions to cover exchange-rate risk, both managed by the ALCO unit (Assets and Liabilities Committee) as well as the equities portfolio managed by the Industrial Holdings unit. Dividends rose reaching 197 million euros, coming mainly from holdings in the industrial portfolio. Net income from companies carried by the equity method also rose and reached 268 million euros. However, there was a reduction in earnings from group transactions, whose biggest item this year was 218 million  from the sale of the  stake in Banco Atlántico, as against the 343 million recorded in 2003 from the sale of Crédit Lyonnais stake. This area also includes general administrative expenses, depreciation and other operating expenses of the headquarters and items which due to their nature cannot be assigned to other business areas; in 2004 these amounted to a similar level to that of the previous year.

Some 579 million euros were put into the amortisation of goodwill from the group’s industrial and financial holdings and in its Latin-American affiliates, as compared to 637 million euros in 2003. Of these, 119 million were one-off payments (Bradesco and Gas Natural).

The extraordinaries included 572 million euros for the cost of early retirements taken in 2004 (372 million net of taxes).

All this produced a loss of 363 million euros for the area, as compared with the 206 million euro loss from 2003.