Articles by The Corner

About the Author

The Corner
The Corner has a team of on-the-ground reporters in capital cities ranging from New York to Beijing. Their stories are edited by the teams at the Spanish magazine Consejeros (for members of companies’ boards of directors) and at the stock market news site Consenso Del Mercado (market consensus). They have worked in economics and communication for over 25 years.
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Spain liberalises online gambling sector

In May, the Spanish government passed a law that will transform and liberalise most sectors of the country’s online gambling market starting at the beginning of 2012. For most of the global market (over 90% of the experts surveyed) the future relevance of the Spanish online gambling market is high. Therefore it comes as no surprise that nearly all operators (ca. 80% of the operators surveyed) are likely to apply for…


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Demand exceeds Spain’s bond sale

MADRID | The Spanish Treasury once again took advantage of the moderation of the interest rates and the high demand to place €5,639.92 million in bonds, more than expected, with the intention of preventing a more complicated situation in 2012, according to Bank of Spain data. The Treasury’s expectations were exceeded for the third consecutive time in December since it was hoping to obtain between €3,500 and €4,500 million. More…


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Spain has new president

By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | Update Mariano Rajoy, elected by an overall majority on November 20, made his investiture speech on Monday. The investiture debate in the Spanish parliament has been held on Tuesday, and after its closing in the afternoon, Mr Rajoy has been officially sworn in as the new Spain’s president. The announce of austerity measures raised yesterday great expectations, since from the election day and in spite of the…


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Japan, Asian real estate private equity funds’ favourite destination

Although the first signs of uncertainty have begun to emerge on the Asian continent with listed real estate companies trading at discounts, real estate fundamentals remain largely trusted. From the macro-economic perspective, Asian giants, China and India, continue to enjoy GDP growth rates of 9.1% and 7.7% respectively in Q3 2011, while other significant markets such as Singapore and Hong Kong also witnessed GDP growth of 6.1% and 4.3% respectively…




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Fearful Europeans

Only the Danes are significantly more positive than the rest of Europeans. More than four of five Danes look hopefully into the future. As an explanation, a British-American Tobacco’s foundation, which recently published a research on Europeans’ attitudes, notes that the Danes increasingly think about personal quality of life instead of the economic standard of living when referring to the term ‘future’. For them, this includes, for example, emancipation, work-life…


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Asian universities outpace Europe in science and engineering student numbers

Asian countries train twice as many scientists compared to European member states, and three times as many engineers. This training gap is threatening the future of Europe’s economic recovery due to the lack of qualified scientific and technical human resources. Although the number of graduates in the fields is now increasing slowly, their academic achievement falls well behind that of their Asian counterparts. Unless this gap is addressed, companies operating in Europe…


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“ECB refinancing auctions means help for Spanish, Italian smaller banks”

The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) decided last week on additional enhanced credit support measures to support bank lending and liquidity in the euro area. In particular, the Governing Council proposed to conduct two longer-term refinancing operations (LTROs) with a maturity of 36 months and the option of early repayment after one year. Among other measures, the central bank also accorded to reduce the reserve ratio, which is…