European Views | The conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues and so do the global gas supply issues. Iran hopes to step in and become Europe’s main gas provider replacing Russian gas export. Iran to Offer Alternative to Russian Gas Export in Europe Being the second-largest gas reserves globally, Iran has 34 trillion cubic metres of natural gas. It’s nearly 17% of the world’s total reserves. Some believe that Iran…
Hamza Mudassir (The Conversation) | The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is now Twitter’s largest shareholder after acquiring a 9.2% stake in the social media platform for just under US$3 billion (£2.3 billion). The announcement drove Twitter’s share price up 27%, and it continued to grow in after-hours trading. This investor enthusiasm is not surprising. Social media platforms have been suffering lately thanks to newly developed pressures in their ecosystems….
A&G | Last week we saw the US 2 year rate move above the 10 year rate. We refer to this phenomenon as a yield curve inversion and it has historically been a leading indicator of recessions, but a very leading indicator. We should bear in mind that the sample is very small, as we only have data for 10 recessions and all 10 have been preceded by an inverted…
Alicia García Herrero (Natixis) | When the Chinese economy sneezes, the global supply chain catches a cold. After the successful containment at the initial stage, China has decided to maintain its dynamic zero-covid strategy against a more contagious albeit milder variant of the virus, namely Omicron. The approach has initiated the lockdown in Shanghai. Given its economic size, trading role, and the contagion risk of lockdowns in the surrounding provinces,…
Simon Harvey, Head of FX Market Analysis at Monex Europe | On the one hand, core inflation moderated in March with a sequential slowdown from 0.5% m-o-m to 0.3% m-o-m, while on the other hand, headline inflation beat expectations. Headline inflation rose by 1.2% month-on-month, in line with expectations, while the annualised rate exceeded expectations by 0.1 percentage point to 8.5%. The slowdown in the month-on-month core CPI to the…
Gerardo Cuerva (*) | For more than ten years, the fight against business late payment has been a priority for the Spanish Confederation of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (CEPYME). It has been developing a strategy of monitoring and recommending good practices aimed at bringing about a cultural change to banish this negative business practice. This strategy has been reinforced in the last year with the creation and promotion of the…
The management of the Italian airports of Fiumicino and Ciampino, and the control of the toll payment system Telepass, make Atlantia a strategic company for Italy, as the Spanish newspaper 5 Días recalls today. And Mario Draghi’s government, according to various stock market analysts, will not hesitate to use all its influence to prevent the infrastructure operator from ending up in foreign hands. This is one of the barriers threatening…
The wage bill of Spanish public administrations exceeded all historical records last year. According to the official INE National Accounts figures published today in the newspaper El Economista, in 2021 the amount of salaries of public sector employees (civil servants along with other categories of public sector staff) plus their payments for social security contributions amounted to 147.363 billion per year. And with inflation soaring, everything points to the fact…
CCOO and UGT have announced this Tuesday the call for a general strike in Correos for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of June due to the “economic, labour and public service collapse” of the company. They blame this on the “chaotic management and manifest incapacity” of the company’s president, Juan Manuel Serrano, “appointed by the PSOE three years ago”. The unions allege that Correos is on the verge of “technical…
ACS is considering launching an offer to acquire the Italian concessionaire Atlantia, the Spanish company’s partner in Abertis, according to Bloomberg on Wednesday and confirmed late in the afternoon by the Spanish construction company. The group headed by Florentino Pérez has already hired advisors to analyse this operation in which it is considering taking over the Italian company’s motorways jointly with GIP and Brookfield. Atlantia’s capitalisation is close to 15.690…