Spain’s Competition Authorities will decide tomorrow whether it will authorise ACS’s bid for Abertis (Atlantia’s offer is already approved). There is also the question of what will happen to Hispasat, a strategic asset for Spain, in which Abertis holds 91%.
“The MAB doesn’t function in Spain at the moment and it needs to. If not, Spain will be left behind. I don’t know whether we should join forces with other markets, or if the ICO should distribute part of its investment to venture capital funds specialised in these kind of companies, or whether the adminstrative procedures should be cheaper and simpler.”
Athanasios Dimadis and Hung Q. Tran | US is not alone in its worry about debt and deficit. According to the International Institute of Finance statistics, China poses the biggest threat to global economic stability, its total debt having risen astronomically over the last decade. The eurozone is still trying to heal the scars of an enduring economic crisis, with Greece’s unmanageable debt remaining a significant problem.
Barry Eichengreen via Caixin | The New Year has seen a flurry of positive news about yuan internationalization. On January 15th the Bank of France announced that it had added the yuan to its reserve portfolio. The National Bank of Belgium reported the next day that it had acquired 200 million euros worth of yuan-denominated assets.
Banco Santander announced earlier this week that it posted profits of 6.619 billion euros in 2017, up 7% from a year earlier: BBVA published its results yesterday, with profits rising 1.3% year-on-year to 3.519 billion. Ten years on, have the two banks recovered from the global financial crisis?
Francesco Saraceno | The crisis is supposedly over, as the European economy started growing again. But this matters little to those who, as soon as things got slightly better, turned to their old obsession: Debt. Bear in mind, not private debt, that seems to have disappeared from the radars. No, what seems to keep policy makers and pundits awake at night is ugly public debt, the source of all troubles (past, present and future).
Spain’s second largest bank BBVA generated a net attributable profit of €3.52 billion (+1.3%) in 2017. Without taking into account the impairment losses from Telefónica, net profit for 2017 stood at €4.64 billion, up 19.7% compared to 2016 results, excluding the provisions related to ‘floor clauses’ in Spain.
ArcelorMittal, the leading global integrated steel and mining firm, said it posted net profit of 4.568 billion dollars in 2017 (3.670 billion euros), 157% up from a year earlier. It will also pay a dividend again for the first time since 2015.
Cepsa wants to open up a gap for itself in the sector for commercialisation of residential electricity and gas, with the aim of grabbing a 1o% share over the coming years. It will thus become one of the four main operators along with Endesa, Iberdrola or Gas Natural Fenosa.
“Having board members who have experience of different environments, geographical or business, help the board to function better. On the boards in Spain where I am a member there is this international presence and there are members of different nationalities. But on a board of directors more importance shoud be placed on expertise than on nationality.”