Spain tries to pin down real estate losses Spain's government will on Thursday announce the appointment of Blackrock and Oliver Wyman as independent valuers of the real estate loans that lie at the heart of the country's banking crisis. The move - to give credibility to Spain's efforts to stem investors" fears about the extent of potential loan losses - comes after a bank overhaul announced last week that part-nationalised troubled lender Bankia and will see the banking sector overall make at least €30bn of extra provisioning. The news emerged as Luis de Guindos, Spain's economy minister, travelled to London on Wednesday to address more than 100 institutional investors ahead of an auction of up to €2.5bn of medium-term government debt on Thursday. Blackrock and Oliver Wyman, which will carry out independent assessments of the banks, will be asked to conduct the process in two stages, according to people briefed on the plan. Within a month they will be required to come up with a "top-down" assessment of the difference between the book value of loans, their current value on a "mark-to-market" basis and their value under a more stressed scenario. A second three-month exercise, which will begin in a month's time, will involve a "bottom-up" examination on a bank-by-bank basis of all loans, which should provide a more discriminating perspective on the sector. The appointment of the external advisers, which will be supported by staff at the Bank of Spain, follows similar moves in Ireland and Greece. It comes at a time when the Bank of Spain's role as the country's financial supervisor has come under attack from politicians over the handling of Bankia. Officials in Spain have noted that the Bank of Spain, whose governor Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez is due to step down this year at the end of his term, has been sidelined in recent months as Mr de Guindos has taken charge of reforming the financial sector. Mr Fernández Ordóñez was an appointment of Spain's previous socialist government and a member of the Socialist party, which has been frequently attacked by the ruling Popular Party for its record during the crisis. The Bank of Spain had in April already contacted Blackrock and Oliver Wyman to make proposals for a "bad bank" structure for Spain's lenders, people with knowledge of the talks said. As part of the provisioning process announced last week, each bank will be forced to create a bad bank into which it will put physical property assets at marked-down valuations in preparation for potential sales to outside investors. Some Spanish government officials have privately expressed concern about the possible conflict of interest at the heart of an institution such as Blackrock, which is also a potential buyer of bank assets. Blackrock has repeatedly stressed the complete separation between the two sides of its business.