The Spanish Inditex Group reported that its newest retailer launched uterque.com, an online store to shoppers in Belgium, the Netherlands and Austria. These three markets add to six more online operations active in European countries. The new online shops went live in April and, as is customary, they offer the same range of merchandise as that found in high street stores, along with the same policy on returns and exchanges….
LONDON | The worsening of Spain’s debt risk grades will have grave implications, whether market participants believe the situation in which the country’s public finances are is reversible or not. Portfolio manager at Skandia Investment Group’s fixed income funds and researcher, Anthony Gillham distrusts talk of priced-in negative events. Although last Friday’s announcement by Standard and Poors that Spain is to be downgraded by two notches from A to BBB+ was…
By Carlos Díaz Guell, in Madrid | In Spain, households’ financial assets fell by 3.5% in 2011 due to a downturn in acquisition activity and especially market declines recorded in the third quarter of last year after the deterioration of the sovereign crisis. This is compounded by the collapse of housing prices, which caused housing sector wealth to fall by 6.6% dragging total net wealth down 51 percentage points of GDP. In 2011 it also was reported a change in the composition of household savings with a fall not seen…
MADRID | After the national office for statistics in Spain confirmed everyone’s suspicions about the country returning to recession, with a -0.3% economic contraction versus expectations of -0.4% , a note from BBVA research team on Spain’s strengths could come handy as a reminder that the #spanic would be still avoidable and this Espan-hole could be safely closed. BBVA analysts explained in its monthly report aptly headlined ‘Leaving stereotypes behind‘ that…
By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | Please, bear with me. First, I took a graph from the Noah Smith’s blog, in which everyone can see that venture capital has almost passed away since the 2000 crisis. The chart shows the value of equity shares, and each line is a selection made under a different approach. The 1990’s were the golden age of risk, people loved risk and the VC funding…
Bad news for those in Brussels and Berlin who expected higher competitiveness through austerity budgets. Eurostat said today that in the fourth quarter of 2011, compared with the previous three months, business investment rates decreased in both the euro area and the European Union. Furthermore, official data also showed that in the euro area, the business profit share declined as wage costs increased while value added fell slightly. From October…
LONDON | As the markets are rocked by France’s presidential elections and attention continues to linger on Spain, where official figures announced that it is once again in recession, currency specialists HiFX reported on Monday a 175% increase in euro sales. The move could benefit euro country members’ exports to the United Kingdom but it would hurt the British economy, as 40% of foreign sales go to the European Monetary…
A curated selection of links we hope can enlighten us all; some come from our corner, some do from other corners of the net. And as always, our comment widgets are anxious to get your suggestions. France isn’t talking about its economy The digital revolution, mind the bit Why Argentina’s president is wrong Everyone talks about Spain… …And many don’t know really what they are saying Democracy and the euro Hollande…
MADRID | The Spanish global infrastructure company Ferrovial has published its results for the first quarter of 2012. The firm said it obtained €192 million of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation compared with €172 million in the first three months of last year, that is, a rise of 11.7%. In the first few months of 2012, Ferrovial’s main businesses improved, particularly revenues at its British division Amey, and international construction, mainly Budimex. Revenues amounted to…
LONDON | Although less than 0.5% of homes in Britain would be affected by the increase in the stamp duty rate for multi-million pound homes announced in the 2012 budget, according to research by Lloyd, the very top end of the market just hit a historic high in sales. Does it need cool down? The total number of sales of properties that cost at least one million pounds in Great Britain was…