Julius Baer Research | In the six weeks since the last Federal Reserve (Fed) meeting, the world has been shaken by several events. Despite rallying equity markets, investors stay rattled and filled with unease. Yet in the US, news on the economic front has been mainly positive. Indicators such as the June employment report, retail sales, housing starts, capacity utilization and the service industry have all beaten expectations.
J.L.M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) | Investors believe that the decision to cut UK interest rates again has only really been postponed. They also believe that it is only a matter of time before the ECB cuts the deposit rate again at the same time as it extends the deadline for asset purchases which is initially set for March 2017.
J.L.M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) | The central banks really need some new arguments for extending their current expansionary monetary policy. As well as for not withdrawing some of the existing measures. The alternative is to get carried away.
Julius Baer Research | The past years’ least loved commodity has made a silent comeback. Coal prices are up more than 30% from the earlier year lows. Northwest European coal import prices, the leading benchmark, trade above USD 55 per tonne. The comeback is in part related to the oil and natural gas price rally.
This week Inditex approved the appointment of Baroness Denise Kingsmill to its board of directors, as well as a long-term incentive plan, in cash and shares, for up to 600 company executives, including chairman Pablo Isla. The company also said it will not alter any plans it has for the UK despite Brexit.
The 25 non-financial companies listed on the Ibex 35 index have achieved something in 2015 which many considered as impossible: reducing their debt ratio. And they have done this despite the fact that their net income was lower than the previous year. According to BME (Bolsas y Mercados Españoles) their financial debt was 38% of liabilities, compared with 44.3% in 2014.
The Spanish wind energy company will start to operate in the Dutch market with an agreement to provide 11 MW and has also signed other five in France, Italy and Greece to install about 72 MW. Gamesa Dutch project entails replacing old turbines in different wind farms –three G58-850 kW units and ten G52-850 kW units.
Despite the rumours, top Spanish Bank Santander -Eurozone’s 2nd largest by market cap- will indeed complete this year the merger of its asset management fund (Santander AM) with Pioneer Investments, Italian UniCredit’s subsidiary, once the operation meets the regulatory and legal requirements. A EUR5.3 bn deal that has been simmering for more than 20 months.
At end-2015, Spanish banks and savings banks had barely a quarter of the holding in Spanish companies’ shares it had in 1992, the first year in the historical series elaborated by BME’s Rearch Department. The current share of 3.6% is 12 percentage points lower than that in 1992 and 5.8 percentage points below the level in 2007, at the start of the global financial crisis.
James Alexander via Historinhas | Brexit is an irrelevance. So say US equities. In fact, if US equities say anything, they seem to think Brexit is a good thing if it means the Fed holds off from rate rises for longer. Bring it on!