Intermoney | ACS (Buy, TP €40) and OHLA (Buy, TP €0,95) have jointly presented the best bid for one of the biggest public-private contracts in the US. This is the Maryland light rail, known as the Purple Line, with a budget of €2.250 billion. The project was initially adjudicated to the US construction firm Flour in 2016, but it abandoned the works at the 15% stage due to cost overruns….
For the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Spain’s two largest cities, Barcelona and Madrid, have generated more hotel bookings than during the same period two years ago, reaching 111.68% and 102.03% of 2019 figures respectively, as of 24 October 2021, SiteMinder’s World Hotel Index reveals. These figures show the strength of Spanish destinations, beyond the coastal cities of sun and beach tourism, where travellers have already…
Nick Ottens (Atlantic Sentinel) | Spain’s ruling left-wing parties have agreed to reverse the labor market liberalizations of the previous conservative government, which made it easier for firms to hire and fire workers. The decision is hard to justify even by the standards set by proponents of repeal. The reforms did not create more precarious jobs, they did not cause higher structural unemployment and they barely made a dent in…
Fernando Alberca | Santander does not want to miss out on the bitcoin boom and other cryptographic projects either. The Spanish bank is finally betting on the Blockchain revolution through funds referenced to bitcoin and, perhaps, to other major cryptocurrencies. These ETFs will most likely be futures ETFs, which does not involve buying bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, to back the fund, in the style of the two ETFs (ProShares and Valkyrie)…
Algeria confirmed at the end of last week the closure of the Maghreb Europe Gas Pipeline, which supplied Spain and Portugal through Morocco. In addition, the non-renewal of the contract signed with the Moroccan kingdom, which expired last Sunday. The Algerian authorities had already announced they would stop supplying through this channel after 25 years of commercial relations with the Iberian peninsula. However, they had not revealed until now what…
Telefónica has reported a record profit of 9.335 billion euros in the year to September – in the third quarter, on a like-for-like basis, profit was 706 million. The 9-months’ figures include the extraordinary results from the divestment of Telxius (around 3.5 billion euros) and the joint venture with Virgin Media in the UK (another 3 billion). These operations have also enabled the company to cut its debt by 31%…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The government has agreed on the labour counter-reform Is this news? The news was the absence of agreement, i.e. the renunciation of the agreement that made the coalition possible. The fact that the agreement is still in force is nothing new, even if a liturgy of tension is staged between the vice-presidents, resolved by the decisive decision of the boss, the resistant one. Apart from the…
Alphavalue | Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, has announced that the country will earmark 20% of its special drawing rights to the trust funds for vulnerable countries. The special drawing rights (SDR) are an international reserve asset, created by the International Money Fund in 1969 to supplement its member countries’ official reserves. Specifically, Sánchez has said that a minimum of 350 million euros will be destined for boosting the capital…
Public companies are more common in Europe than might a priori be imagined. Countries such as France and Italy, as well as Austria, Sweden and Finland, are good examples of European states with extensive public participation in their respective energy giants. Particularly relevant is the French case, where EDF (with almost 85% state ownership) enjoys a great popular reputation for guaranteeing electricity services to the most remote corners of the country. In the Spanish case, by contrast, the State’s shareholding is limited to 20 % in Red Eléctrica de España, the company that manages the energy transmission infrastructure and therefore has no direct impact on the price of electricity.
Excluding the effect of the merger, Caixabank recorded an adjusted profit of €2.022 billion in the year to September, due to commercial activity and lower provisions, compared to €726 million a year ago. According to Norbolsa analysts, “Caixabank’s results are better than expected at the bottom line (+23.1% vs. estimate) mainly due to a very low cost of risk in the quarter (18 b.p. vs. 45 b.p. e). Apart from…