The following is an excerpt from SUZANNE DALEY | May 26, 2012 | Nytimes.com |
ZARAGOZA, Spain — There was a time when Ivan Moreno, 34, felt he was on the verge of something big — when it seemed right to settle his rapidly expanding skateboard company into a modern warehouse on the outskirts of this city, when orders piled up from stores around the world.
Those days are gone.
Like the owners of many small and medium-size companies in Spain, he is just struggling to stay alive now, a victim, he says, of the vast restructuring of Spain’s banking sector after the collapse of the real estate bubble in 2008. Mr. Moreno said his bankers closed his roughly $250,000 credit line step by step, imposing harsh repayment plans and effectively strangling his young business.
“So many times, I went to the bank and said, ‘What did I do wrong?’ ” said Mr. Moreno, who recently had to lay off almost all of his employees, including a childhood friend. “But they just said they wanted their money back.”
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