MADRID | Habitat Bankia, BFA Group-Bankia’s property company, announced it has sold over 2,400 real estate assets between January and June of this year. The value of these operations amounts to €230 million. These units from foreclosed assets and the pace of divestment reflects an increase of 17% year on year. In a market environment characterised by continued declines in sales and purchases, the decision of downsizing its real estate…
MADRID | Spanish technology corporation Indra signed two contracts with Brazil’s Caixa Económica Federal. Indra will provide communication system services for an estimated €37 million during a period of four years. The contracts include specialised technical services for the development and maintenance of information technology programmes related to product portfolio in loans and financing and risk management. Caixa Económica Federal, one of the largest banks in Brazil, is also the largest…
MADRID | Indra has been awarded this August a contract by Hispasat to develop and implement the ground control systems that will manage the new Amazonas-3 communications satellite. This satellite, which will be located at the Brazilian orbital position 61º West, will be launched into space in the second half of the year. Indra has collaborated closely with Hispasat for approximately 20 years. Over this time, it has implemented the…
By Luis A. Torralba, in Valencia | valenciaplaza.com | Once the technology system integration will be completed in October 12, Cajas Rurales Unidas will become the largest group of rural credit unions in Spain. CRU reached at the beginning of this year a business management volume of €69.8 billion, with €39.6 billion in assets and a healthy core capital rate of 12.62 percent. Two of the entities leading the agreement,…
BARCELONA | Through its municipal and environmental services subsidiary Cespa, Ferrovial Services announced it has installed the first wind-powered recharging station for electric vehicles in Europe. The station, equipped with a 4 kW wind turbine, is the first in Europe to generate electricity from wind and use it for vehicle recharging. Cespa manages municipal waste collection and cleaning contracts in western Barcelona as well as an end-to-end garden maintenance contract in…
LONDON | The sterling on Tuesday was mostly unmoved by the light controversy between some of the top ratings agencies regarding the UK’s triple A qualification on its government debt issuance. That is the highest grade, only to be found over the so-called core European countries. A day had barely passed after Standard & Poor’s said the British AAA was solid, when Moody’s noted that an increasingly weak economy poses…
NEW YORK | It is a battle that started about two years ago. Samsung and Apple’s endless dispute over intellectual property arrives to court this Monday in California. Together the two companies account for more than 50 percent of all the world’s smartphone sales. A jury will have to determine if any of them has infringed copyright laws against the other. On one side of the ring, Apple, that filed…
MADRID | Inditex announced this week it signed a letter of intent for the acquisition of 300,000 square metres in Cabanillas, Guadalajara (Spain) in order to expand its logistics capacity. The project is set within the plans of the group’s investment in its facilities in Spain detailed by the chairman Pablo Isla during the general meeting of shareholders held on July 17. Initially, a 70,000 square metre platform for logistics activities is…
BARCELONA | CaixaBank reported Friday a poor attributed January to March net income of €166 million as a result of provisions enforced by the Spanish government, set to clean up the balance sheets of the country’s banking sector. For the Catalan entity, the figure means an 80.1-percent cut down comparing to the first quarter of 2011 and bears the scars of large write-downs of €3.735 billion. CaixaB ank said that, as…
LONDON | Even before the office for national statistics released its estimates of a UK economy in continued slow-motion deterioration, 84 percent of small and medium size companies’ decision makers said they were concerned about the British economic climate, with 38% being very concerned. A new SME Risk Index from global insurer Zurich published Friday showed that the majority in the sector do not feel confident that the economic situation will improve in…