Santander has put on sale a portfolio, known as Apple, of €6 Bn of housing assets, and hopes to close the agreement on their transfer this month. Last summer, just after acquiring Banco Popular, Santander agreed to sell to Blackstone €30 Bn worth of housing assets originating in Popular.
Julius Baer’s focus today lies on the NATO summit. Donald Trump has promised the American taxpayers to make Europe pay more for its own defence. The official target is 2% of gross domestic product, but most European countries spend way below.
J.L.M. Campuzano | The ECB calculates that its extreme expansionary monetary measures have contributed nearly two points to European growth since 2014. The question now is whether the benefits of maintaining them outweigh the risks of prolonging excessively lax financial conditions too long.
Caixin | The country’s National Development and Reform Commission, together with the Ministry of Commerce, announced at the end of June a shortened “negative list” for foreign investors, which will come into effect on July 28. The newly shortened list removes restrictions on entrance to primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, and includes 22 opening-up measures in important areas, including finance, transportation and logistics, trade circulation, professional services, manufacturing, infrastructure, energy, natural resources and agriculture.
Caixabank Research consider recent trends in human capital and the outlook for the future. The quality of the US workforce has undergone a remarkable transformation: over the past 70 years, the level of training has consistently improved. However, several studies also indicate that over the next few years, the contribution of human capital to growth could be more marginal. One of the main reasons for this is the retirement of the baby boomers.
The departures of David Davis and Boris Johnson clearly rip apart what appeared to be the makings of a fragile Brexit ceasefire among some of the big players in the Conservative Party. That ceasefire has now collapsed into open conflict and chaos. And while it’s foolhardy to make any firm predictions at the moment, it’s clear that May has a major crisis on her hands.
Rafael Domenech (BBVA Research) | Since 2014, Spain has been growing at rates higher than those of most other European countries. During these years, Spain has recovered the competitiveness lost before the crisis.
Ignacio de la Torre and Leopoldo Torralba (Arcano Partners) | Regarding Bitcoin, we are reaching a point where there is great confusion between the price and the value. If I buy a Bitcoin at $6,000 I would expect a higher value that justifies the greater risk that comes with it (it is extremely volatile, over 60%; while the volatility of currencies like the euro or dollar are less than 3%).
José Benito de Vega | Since the beginning of 2017 Siemens Gamesa (SGRE) shares have performed poorly, falling -20% compared to -1% for the Ibex 35. This is even clearer compared to the maximums of May 2017 since when they have fallen -40% (-11% Ibex 35).
BS Markets | Spanish banks’ recourse to Eurosystem financing stood at almost 170 billion euros in May. Second only to Italy’s in Eurozone, whose needs amount to around 250 billion euros. In both cases these volumes represent 15% of GDP and between 6 and 7% of the size of the sector.