By Tania Suárez, in Madrid | Gabriel Montalto is general manager in Spain at Hanseatic Brokerhouse. In a conversation with The Corner, he pointed out that the European Central Bank should finish with the liquidity injections as soon as possible. Montalto also remarked that is doubtful that Germany decides to change its policy of austerity. Do you think the euro zone is already in recession? According to the data we are…
By LaCaixa Research Team, in Barcelona | In the years prior to the recession that started in the last decade, in many countries the gradually increasing debt of the private sector allowed for much more intensive economic growth than would have been seen without it. The abrupt appearance of the crisis frustrated this expansion and revealed an excessive level of debt. This debt is now a heavy burden that can counteract…
International Financial Analysts AFI in Madrid added their opinion in agreement with more or less everyone else: the mix of relaxed monetary policy, fiscal retrenchment and depreciation of the sterling pound that has been engineered in Downing Street by the Coalition government isn’t working. In fact, AFI said the UK’s is the economy with the weakest recovery response against the crisis among the main developed economies. As the Bank of…
MADRID | Banco Santander registered a net attributable profit of €1.604 billion in the first quarter of 2012, a decline of 24% year on year. Santander, that released Thursday its results for the January-March period of this year, noted that this decline was mainly due to the significant increase in provisions for non-performing loans, which rose by 51% to €3.127 billion. Banco Santander revenues in the first quarter grew by more than…
LONDON | J.P. Morgan asset management had some cold words on the news that the UK has entered a double dip recession. Tom Elliott, global strategist at the investment company said that “For most people, the country has felt like it has been in recession since late 2008, so news of an official double dip will be no surprise.” In a short note released after the British office for national statistics…
Although the difficulties that the Spanish small and medium sized companies experience to access finance showed signs of very soft relief, the figures were bad. The latest survey on SMEs in the euro zone offered a stark picture of small companies in Spain suffering the worse end of the credit crunch, as a consequence of a weak domestic market. In contrast, Spain’s corporations are able to weather the crisis thanks…
MADRID | The German Treasury placed Wednesday €2.4 billion in 30-year bunds with an average return of 2.41%, down from 2.62% in the previous auction. The bid to cover dropped to 1.1 times from 2.1 times. Berlin admitted that demand had been lower than expected, and the total sale volume planned had been left uncovered. In a note to investors, Citigroup in Spain commented on the German explanations and made an interested, interesting comparison: “This reflects a context of volatility and uncertainty, but more importantly, the…
By Carlos Díaz Guell, in Madrid | Global foreign direct investment flows in 2011 increased by 17% year on year, recovering pre-crisis levels. Spain also regained investment flows into equity last year, with a rise in total net investment (total minus divestiture) of 18.2% year on year that reached 1.8% of GDP. Some aspects of this foreign direct investment figure in Spain are worth commenting. For instance, the growth rate was positive…
By Jesús Sánchez-Quinones, in Madrid, for Cotizalia | Europe has for more than three years now been immersed in a profound crisis of its economy and beyond. The focus of trouble has been moving from country to country. First it was Greece, when its authorities acknowledged that they had falsified its public account figures in late 2009. After Greece, the focus shifted to Ireland when his government had to seek a bailout to…
MADRID | Morgan Stanley in Madrid released an investor note on Tuesday with some recommendations, and we spotted a couple of Spanish companies (always on the bright side, we know…) “We propose the following basket of 64 stocks (Nifty Fifty +) with the intent to replicate the behaviour on the original list (Nifty Fifty) for the years 60/70 in the U.S. “The criteria we used for this stock selection exercise are:…