Repsol (REP) has just submitted, via Hecatte Energy, an application to the New York State Office of Renewable Energy Siting to build a 500 MW solar plant in the towns of Elba and Oakfield. The plant will involve an investment of over $500 million and is expected to create more than 500 jobs during construction. It is capable of supplying 920,000 MWh of renewable electricity annually. This will be enough…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The approval of the 2021 budget was one of the first successes of the coalition government headed by Pedro Sánchez. It was like a resistance test for the alliance that made the government possible, with partners in the government (the United-Power conglomerate) and occasional partners in Parliament (regionalists, nationalists and various pro-independence supporters). The budget was approved after previous failed experiences and the government felt ratified…
Ronen Palan via The Conversation | Finance ministers in London from the G7 group of wealthy nations have agreed a deal that has been described invariably as a landmark that will transform the landscape of global corporate tax. The supposed deal is certainly transformational. Transformation from what to what? Is it going to transform a system of taxation that simply does not fit for purpose in the 21st? Or is it going to transform the techniques of tax avoidance?
Today, Monday 7 June, the Fed will start selling its positions in 16 corporate debt ETFs ($8.6 billion) as part of its decision to unwind $13.8 billion in ETFs and bonds under the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility before the end of the year. The turn for corporate bond sales will come after the summer, in both cases proceeding in a “gradual and orderly” manner.
In 2011, Telefónica’s liabilities exceeded 56 billion euros. Today, however, after the latest operations (the merger agreement for its business in the United Kingdom, the sale of towers to American Tower…) it has cut its leverage by a further 8.4 billion euros and reduced it to less than half, at 26 billion. Although this amount is starting to become more manageable for the group, the most critical operators point out…
Fernando González Urbaneja | Are you in favour of pardons, meaning that you are a “sanchista” (a faction of Spanish socialism)? However, if you are against them, then your position is more or less conservative or fascist, or perhaps liberal, to the right. It’s a simplification, but describes in a nutshell the bureaucracy in which Spanish politics is bogged down. Pardons, their legality, convenience, usefulness… occupy all the space for…
Bank lending rose by RMB 1.28 trillion, well below consensus expectations of RMB 1.56 trillion, while aggregate financing to the real economy (AFRE), which includes loans and bonds, recorded net growth of RMB 1.85 trillion (against expectations of RMB 2.25 trillion). As a result, China’s M2 money supply declined from +9.4% y-o-y in March to +8.1% y-o-y in April. It has returned to pre-Covid levels in 2018/19.
BancaMarch | Brussels has upgraded Spain’s GDP growth forecast. The Commission’s new forecasts put Spain’s GDP growth at 5.9% in 2021 (5.6% previous estimate) and 6.8% in 2022 (5.3% previous estimate). So Spain would regain pre-pandemic GDP levels by end-next year. The improvement in the revision is a consequence of progress in vaccination and the disbursement of European funds, of which Spain is one of the major beneficiaries. To this…
T.C. | An Internet database leak has uncovered a network of more than 200,000 people posting fake product reviews on Amazon in exchange for free product ratings. This was explained by the cybersecurity company SafetyDetectives, which discovered an open ElasticSearch database with a total of 13,124,962 records, weighing 7 GB, the researchers said in a statement. The database contained a server that hosted direct messages between various Amazon sellers with…
T.C. | Coinciding with the end of the state of alarm in Spain, the French ‘low cost’ Ouigo -subsidiary of SNCF- has today, Monday, kicked off the liberalisation of passenger trains in Spain. With five daily high-speed trains between Madrid and Barcelona, two of them stopping in Zaragoza and another one in Tarragona, and at really competitive prices: from 9 euros for adults and with a flat fare of 5…