Gary Grappo | America’s latest round of sanctions on Iran’s primary hard currency earner will be felt not only by the Iranian government, but also by Iranian people. Washington’s frequent use of economic sanctions for all matter of offenses could end up diminishing their utility over the long term and empowering bad actors.
The G20 meeting that will take place on Friday 30th November 2018 and into the weekend could serve as an ideal venue for pre-meeting deals. The market is already anticipating trade deals between US and China to counter the surge in protectionism we have seen in the past year. However, Neil Dwane, strategist at Allianz Global Investors has an interesting theory: if trade tensions continue, the US and China could lock each other out and create their own tech ecosystems, forcing the rest of the world to choose one over the other.
William Chislett | In the Franco regime and well into the 1980s, the lion’s share of Spanish banking business in a strongly protected and highly profitable market was in the hands of the so-called Big Seven and those banks, affiliated to or associated with them. The Big Seven have morphed over the past 30 years into the Big Two, as a result of a wave of mergers, after Spain joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1986.
The housing market continues to show an intense dynamic. Sales increased 9.7% in September, and drives an accumulated figure of 395,534 operations in the year so far, the largest volume in this period since 2008. Although the vigour is seen in all segments, sales of new houses stand, up 11.5% up to Q318.
Nick Malkoutzis via Macropolis| Given the concern within the eurozone that the next crisis is just around the corner and that not enough has been done to prevent it, there is a new urgency to learn from our recent past. The precariousness of the Italian situation, and other threats to the single currency, are the best motivation possible to assess what went right or wrong in previous year.
The first figures on the purchase by consumers on Black Friday and the last weekend show significant strength in private consumption. The data published by the firm Customer Growth Customers should be highlighted, which shows that between Thursday and Sunday some 60 billion dollars of products were sold in the US through different sales channels, which represents a 6% increase over the same period last year.
With the economic slowdown and equity market correction in China, hidden domestic debt has come to the attention of global markets again. The vast majority of that debt is in wholly owned shell companies, called Local Government Financing Vehicles (LGFV). Analysts at Julius Baer estimate that only around half of them are businesses with real, sustainable cash flow.
The European Commission authorise the merger in Holland between Tele2 and Deutsche Telekom without preconditions , which drove the European teleco sector yesterday. Until now the Commission had shown itself radically opposed to allowing corporate operations which imply a reduction from four to three in the number of operators in a country.
The ECB will not start the normalization of its monetary policy in 2019. This is the bet of Philippe Waechter, chief economist at Ostrum AM (affiliated to Natixis AM). He also thinks that the interest rate level will remain stable, that the refi rate and the deposit rate will remain at the current level in 2019.
From today until Thursday the President of China, Xi Jinping, is on an official visit to Spain. It is the first visit to Spain by a President of China for 13 years. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, both countries will seek to advance the bilateral relationship in multiple areas, from bilateral political relations, geopolitics, economics and the educational-linguistic area to science, among others.