By Luis A. Torralba, in Valencia | valenciaplaza.com | Once the technology system integration will be completed in October 12, Cajas Rurales Unidas will become the largest group of rural credit unions in Spain. CRU reached at the beginning of this year a business management volume of €69.8 billion, with €39.6 billion in assets and a healthy core capital rate of 12.62 percent. Two of the entities leading the agreement,…
By JLM Campuzano, analyst, in Madrid | If the governor of the European Central Bank (ECB) said nothing new, why did the markets drop? To be sure, there was a deep sense of disappointment. His comments a week ago had sparked high expectations and, whether Mario Draghi admits it or not, hopes haven’t been met. And there is nothing worse than disillusioned investors. More disquieting, though, is that Draghi acknowledged…
By CaixaBank research team, in Barcelona | After the first six months of the year, it’s time to think about the current situation of the economy and its prospects for the second half of the year. There are two main lines along which the euro area’s activity is running. Firstly, the consensus that its institutional design is not enough to tackle the challenges posed by the current crisis. The absence…
By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | With a little help from the Federal Reserve and the current government, the number of unsold housing in the US is beginning to reach some normalcy. Oversupply, one of the biggest barriers to restore a healthy functioning sector, has stopped. House volume per family now sits at 1992 levels. In Spain, unfortunately, we haven’t even started. The only sure thing about these matters in…
MADRID | Supermarket chains serve a few of our basic needs and so the sector is faring better than other industries against the fierce crisis that is lacerating the European economy day in, day out. The same goes for Spain. Distribuidora Internacional de Alimentación DIA, the distribution chain, said Thursday that its sales in Spain had grown by 6 percent during the first half of the year. DIA reported today…
By CaixaBank research team, in Barcelona | The slowdown in the recovery of the labour market is the factor that best explains this slump in consumption. In May, 69,000 net jobs were created, a very modest figure that follows on from the bad figures for April. Similarly, the hours worked and weekly wages also fell. The recovery is too slow and the level of employment prior to the crisis is…
The euro zone’s doggedness showed up again in the latest quarterly European sector accounts released by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, and the European Central Bank. From January to March of 2012, compared with the last three months of 2011, the business investment rate remained nearly stable in the euro area and fell slightly in the wider European Union. Also, the business profit share even rose slightly in the euro area, as wage costs remained…
MADRID | Telefonica Global Solutions and Samsung begin Wednesday a partnership agreement to support enhanced end to end service delivery to multinational customers globally. The agreement, the Spanish company said, leverages the core competences and leading market positions of both Telefonica, in global digital and communication services and Samsung, in electronics and cutting edge technology, to bring to the multinational market a differential partnership designed to deliver innovative new services. The agreement sets how Telefonica and Samsung will from today…
MADRID | Three years have passed since the US took hold in mid-2009 of something of an economic recovery. The green in the green shoots has been paler than first thought, though. JP Morgan analysts in Spain released today a note saying that, by GDP per capita standards, we are witnesses of the weakest rebound the US has lived since World War Second. In the JP Morgan chart, populations has…
BARCELONA | Through its municipal and environmental services subsidiary Cespa, Ferrovial Services announced it has installed the first wind-powered recharging station for electric vehicles in Europe. The station, equipped with a 4 kW wind turbine, is the first in Europe to generate electricity from wind and use it for vehicle recharging. Cespa manages municipal waste collection and cleaning contracts in western Barcelona as well as an end-to-end garden maintenance contract in…