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Markets 21st May 2012

IMF reports 70pc of Spain’s banking system already cleaned up

By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | The idea of a suffocated Spanish banking sector spreads like fire throughout the markets: Bankia’s nationalisation, Moody’s cut, the French president François Hollande advising to recapitalise the sector… But the International Monetary Fund will publish next week a report that assures 70% of Spain’s financial entities are already restructured. This news should help tame and perhaps even extinguish the flames. Analysts at Madrid’s financial City also…

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Markets 21st May 2012

Monday’s chart: that bank deposit flight

From Afi analysts in Madrid, an investor note came Monday with the picture of that much talked about capital flight from the euro peripheral banking systems in the form of non-financial private sector bank deposits. The variation this year, although somewhat noticeable, has not accelerated and volumes remain above 2010 levels in Portugal, Spain and Italy. Greece, on the other hand, shows a seemingly non-stoppable drop since 2009. All in…

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Markets 18th May 2012

UK banks could face £100-billion bill in commercial property debt

LONDON | Debt held against UK commercial property fell last year from £228.1 billion to £212.3 billion, a drop of 6.8%, the largest British property lending survey revealed Friday. Yet the UK Commercial Property Lending Market report by De Montfort University found that while the overall level of debt is on a downward trajectory and progress has been made in dealing with the distressed legacy debt, there is a long way…

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Markets 18th May 2012

Grexit: The Greek exit would cost France and Germany dear

LONDON | If you haven’t heard of it, you have simply not been on planet Earth: Grexit was the trendiest word this week, but for the wrong reasons. Would Greece exit the euro zone, shuttering prospects of an approaching global economic recovery? The matter was not whether the Hellenic nation could stand the heat coming from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which assured the…

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Markets 18th May 2012

The City wants Germany to give peripheral economies more time

LONDON | The financial City of London would pose as an unlikely critic of Germany’s tactics throughout the long euro rope pulling between the peripheral rotten economies and the apparently unstoppable Teutonic motor. Report after report has come out from City analysts supporting how urgent austerity packages were and pointing at every bad decision made by Greek, Irish, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish politicians, who should have known better. Truth be told,…

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Markets 17th May 2012

Thursday’s charts: dumb bets

Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | Greece was in free fall mode when at the European Central Bank they had the funny idea of pushing the country …downwards. The ECB said it had frozen all operations with Greek banks, which already are suffering a killing capital drain: “Central bank head George Provopoulos told Papoulias that Greeks have withdrawn as much as €700 million ($891 million) and the situation could worsen, according to the transcript…

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Markets 17th May 2012

Five things to consider about the Facebook frenzy

NEW YORK | One of the biggest company stock market flotation on history is about to take place this Friday. With more than 900 million users around the world, Mark Zuckerberg’s company could be valued at $104 billion, that is more than Disney, Ford and Kraft Foods. The excitement grew as Zuckerberg announced that it would offer more shares to investors: 421 million, 25 percent more than it had previously planned…

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Markets 14th May 2012

JP Morgan says European equities’ in recovery mode

LONDON | US equities’ outperformance is becoming exhausted and investors should look through the euro smoke for opportunities, JP Morgan advised clients in its latest weekly strategy report. In spite of agreeing in line with consensus, analysts’ recommendation was to open ears to what the arguments might be in support of European equities. Is it time to go overweight Europe?, the investment entity asked in its paper. Although every investor’s favourite regional equity bet…

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Markets 14th May 2012

Large amounts of corporate bonds issued in the first quarter of 2012

By La Caixa research team, in Barcelona | In the last months, activity in the corporate bond markets continued to speed up. During the first few sessions, the combination of the ECB’s extensive liquidity and doubts regarding Greece limited volumes in the primary and secondary markets. But the gradual improvement in the climate regarding sovereign and financial risks at a global level and the flow of good economic data boosted corporate…

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Markets 11th May 2012

The European Investment Bank could be the answer to austerity exhaustation

LONDON | Were the tide changing within the shaken frontiers of the European Monetary Union, austerity-driven core euro nations could do worse than open the European Investment Bank’s window to let some fresh capital aid in. Barclays analysts said Friday in a note to investors that using the EIB to complement budget constrictions would be a feasible option and the probability of this happening is growing: this time it is…