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Articles by Julia Pastor

About the Author

Julia Pastor
Julia Pastor has broad experience in business writing for Consejeros Media Group at Consejeros, Consenso del Mercado and The Corner. Previously, she worked for the financial news agency GBA and contributed to El País Business. She holds a Master's in Financial Journalism and a degree in English from the Complutense University in Madrid.
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Spanish economy 31st March 2014

Spain sees sovereign debt interests go down by 50%

MADRID | By Julia Pastor | Spanish public Treasury will have its weekly appointment with investors on Thursday. This time the country will issue bonds with maturities of 5, 10 and 12 years, respectively. There would be nothing unusual about it if international investors’ appetite for the Spanish sovereign debt were usual. However, interests in national treasuries currently reach levels of the 90’s when, before euro’s introduction, those bought Spain’s debt during seven quarters without a break. The institution even considers the possibility of creating 50 years bonds. At this moment, the Spanish 10 years bonds yield under 3.25%. As the summer comes the benchmark debt could stand at around 3%.

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Spanish economy 30th March 2014

Repsol is to attract more sovereign funds to Spain

MADRID | By Julia Pastor | Spanish oil company Repsol could sell two block of shares reaching 10% to sovereign funds. The presence of this kind of investors in Spain is not new, much less in strategy sectors such as energy, but the point is that corporate managing teams have allowed those to enter their capital and look under the rug. Furthermore, sovereign funds’ investments criteria such as will of permanence, long term view and sustainability are always good news for a firm. Singapore’s Temasek fund already holds 5% of Repsol, while Qatar’s has also participation in other national energy companies. Therefore, both would have more options to be those packages’ next owners.

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In Europe 27th March 2014

Greece: come back Cleisthenes, all is forgiven

ATHENS | By Nick Malkoutzis via The Agora | Over the last few weeks, several members of Greece’s 2004-2009 government have basked in the same Attica sunlight as the ancients, while displaying the carefree abandon of people who don’t feel responsible for the country’s dire financial state or its shattered reputation.Had public officials done the same in other European countries, their careers would have been destroyed. In Greece, these men claim their absolution and rehabilitation almost unchallenged.

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Markets 27th March 2014

Market chatter: bonds await ECB’s move

MADRID | By Julia Pastor | European sovereign bonds markets have put some champagne bottles on the fridge for next neek in the case the ECB decides to inject some stimulus on the euro zone at last. Without setting a precedent, president Mario Draghi and Bundesbank’s head Jens Weidmann seem to bring their positions over the mechanism closer. This change of direction led Spanish 10-years bonds to 2005’s minimum yields of 3.27% and was behind the successful issue of Italian public Treasury, which sold €2.5 bn at also very low prices. Just Greece’s bonds are trending downwards.

 

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World economy 27th March 2014

Chinese state-owned oil firms head into uncharted waters

BEIJING | By H.Kaixi, W. Xiaobing and Y. Ning via Caixin | Since February, state-owned oil majors have taken steps toward pilots in mixed-share ownership, following central government calls for reforms to state-owned enterprises (SOEs). In a previous round of SOE reforms launched in 1998, the top three oil majors, CNPC, Sinopec and China National Offshore Oil Co. (CNOOC) underwent asset restructurings and went public abroad. But shortly thereafter reforms came to a halt. The competition that policymakers wanted to bring about never happened.

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In Europe 26th March 2014

Is ice between ECB and Bundesbank melting?

MADRID | By Julia Pastor | The Bundesbank must be really worried about euro zone’s economy evolution. The German central bank’s chairman Jens Weidmann, paradigm of the country’s economic orthodoxy, opened the door to an ECB’s eventual bond purchase program for the first time in order to fight against common currency’s appreciation and the ghost of deflation. Furthermore, the German economy, strongly linked to Ukrainian interests, could suffer a downturn in the 2Q14, according to Bundesbank’s estimations. Meanwhile, the ECB could be studying some operational and legal points to start the stimulus program.

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In Europe 24th March 2014

EU Troika: examining the examiner

MADRID | By Julia Pastor | “We come here to get rid of capitalist friends of EU’s Troika”, some demonstrators shouted last Saturday in Madrid. The international organization is back in Spain this week to review the country’s economic developments after January’s finalization of its bail-out, as an European Parliament’s inquiry unfolds over the triumvirate’s working method, its internal dissagrements and mistaken measures.

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In Europe 21st March 2014

Tell me which headline you want, I will give you the statistics you need

MADRID | By Julia Pastor | Accounting is a changeable economic science. The result of a specific rate can vary depending on the items one put inside. Spaniards are used to manage different unemployment figures coming from different statistical data with different components, so that jobless population numbers can go from 5,98 to 4,72 million in the same quarter. The EU has just agreed to modify the methodology for calculating the region’s structural public deficit, which not only will relax peripheral countries’ efforts of austerity but also figures of Spain’s natural rate of unemployment.

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In Europe 20th March 2014

Better a late banking union than none

MADRID | By Julia Pastor | After a 16-hour-marathon talks until 7 a.m, 28 EU states reached an agreement on the Single Resolution Mechanism in order to achieve the long-awaited banking union. But they ignore two relevant realities about the project. First, 1989’s Second EU Banking Directive already considered the same common financial tools that today are being sold as a priority and an innovation for the European construction. Furthermore, there is no point in celebrating: a French entity still does not lend money to a Greek one. This deal is not correcting the euro zone’s financial fragmentation.

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In Europe 19th March 2014

Germany feels sure about European rescue fund- not ECB’s OMT

MADRID | By Julia Pastor| German judges are removing uncertainties little by little. The country’s Constitutional Court confirmed on Tuesday that the European Mechanism of Stability is legal and does not damage the Bundestag’s budget. Furthermore, they also approved euro zone’s fiscal pact. The court had brought an appeal against constitutionality of both treaties in June of 2012. The third appeal regarding ECB’s bond purchase program is still pending of a sentence, however, and apparently it would be more difficult to solve: Karlsruhe’s court has required European Court of Justice to decide against the program following the arguments -more economic than legal- that Bundesbank has handed to them.