Telefonica is starting the process of preparing a stock market listing for a stake in its currently fully-owned Argentine subsidiary. In the upcoming AGM on April 16, it’s expected that authorisation will be sought from shareholders to go ahead with the share placement.
Unsurprisingly, the US exhibits relatively more risks compared to the euro area, with one red flag in particular being the price of risk in asset markets reflecting elevated asset prices across fixed income, equities and real estate. In the Euro zone, risks look mor e modest except in some pockets related to price distortions as a result of the European Central Bank ’s quantitative easing strategy.
Spotify made its debut on Wall Street on Tuesday with an initial price of $165,9/share, up 26% from the reference price established ($132/share). The Swedish music streaming firm closed its first trading session up 12% at $143/share.
In a note on regional commercial banks, AlphaValue analysts flag that lenders in southern European countries have been amongst the better performers in terms of share price and P/BV. Spanish bank Sabadell is amongst their top picks.
The number of Spanish unemployment fell by 47,697 in March in comparison with the previous month, according to figures from the Labour ministry. Figures of registered unemployed totaled 3.42 million, which was the lowest level of the last nine years.
The IMF is forecasting global growth of over 3.9% in 2018. For the Eurozone, the forecast is for growth of 2.2%. The fifth year of economic expansion, confirming sustained and diversified growth. And the Washington-based organisation is calling for greater integration in the euro area.
Although most of Spain’s public debt belongs to the central Administration, the debt held by the 17 autonomous regions is by no means insignificant: it accounts for 25% of Spain’s GDP, way above the 16% it represented just five years ago. Many regions are now returning to the debt markets.
The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings has begun to raise some Spanish companies’ ratings, which was expected after it improved its rating on the country from “BBB+/Positive” to “A-/Positive” on March 23. Bankia, Mapfre and state-owned Cores are the three chosen firms.
The volume of property investment in Spain rose 9% to 9.2 billion euros in 2017 from a year earlier. This represents a two percentage points increase on the growth registered in Europe as a whole over the same year, according to Savills Aguirre Newman.
From the creation of the first block of Bitcoin in January 2009, and after the reference implementation of the decentralised client developed by the enigmatic figure Satoshi Nakamoto, the perception of cryptocurrencies has changed a lot.