BRUSSELS | May 8, 2015 | By Jacobo de Regoyos | In the second part of his conversation with The Corner, GDF Suez (now Engie) Chairman and CEO Gérard Mestrallet refuses to comment on the French government allegedly approving rules to protect multinationals from potential takeover bids. He insist that the carbon price is currently too low, and that does not send a clear signal to the industry players.
BRUSSELS | May 7, 2015 | By Jacobo de Regoyos | Present in 70 countries, GDF Suez is now named ENGIE. “A simple and strong name that evokes energy for all and across all cultures,” says its Chairman and CEO, who will leave his position in April 2016. This is the first part of his conversation with The Corner in Brussels.
MADRID | April 19, 2015 | By Ana Fuentes | Germany’s Institute for the Study of Labor Chairman Klaus Zimmermann finds the debate between EU ‘austerians’ and ‘stimulus fans’ too shallow. In his view, spending cuts for their own sake were never the German style. In a conversation with The Corner, he explains that the effects of the minimum wage introduction in his country cannot be measured yet and why he thinks the German corporate governance model helped cushion the crisis’ labor market impact.
MADRID | April 1, 2015 | By Fernando Barciela | The Corner caught up with Luis Iturbe, a board member with Spanish insurance giant, Mapfre. He emphasises the improving health of the Spanish banking sector, but says that the capital increases by lenders, notably Santander, have prevented the Spanish stock market to reach the same revaluations as its peers. He also states that markets in London and New York dished out an unreasonable level of punishment to the euro and Greece.
MADRID | March 26, 2015 | By Ana Fuentes | In the second part of our exclusive interview with the IOSCO Secretary General, David Wright speaks about corporate oversight and the need to change a culture which has conflicts of interests at its centre. [You can check Part 1 here]
WASHINGTON | March 2, 2015 | By Pablo Pardo | Neil Irwin believes central bankers are the real heroes of the economic crisis that continues to bog down the eurozone. In his book ‘The alchemists’, the New York Times senior correspondent paints Ben Bernanke as a hero and ECB’s Jean-Claude Trichet, as one of the greatest villains.
MADRID | January 5, 2015 | By Ana Fuentes | Dissensions at the ECB’s the Governing Council are well-known, and still have a long way to go. While some counselors require a truly expansive monetary policy which helps curbing the deflationary expectations, others deny these latter and therefore refuse to go further and define balance sheet expansion targets. Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, who was Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank from June 2005 to November 2011, is among those who believe that the ECB can take much stronger action.
STOCKHOLM | By Wang Liwei via Caixin | 2014 Nobel Prize in economics Jean Tirole has been working on ways to tame powerful companies and tailor government regulations to different industries since the 80s. He speaks to Caixin about market regulation, eurozone banks and their sovereign.
BEIJING | By Caixin‘s Hu Shuli and intern researcher Nikolai Blackie | Wal-Mart’s CEO Doug McMillon discusses challenges of doing business in emerging markets, the recent food safety scandals that have put great pressure on the firm in China, and of overcoming challenges during a long career.
MADRID | The Corner | Everything went by the book: after Spain’s largest bank Santander chairman Emilio Botin died on Wednesday, his daughter Ana Patricia Botín (53) was appointed to succeed him. Her long career in finance, closely supervised by his father, took her to the UK, where Santander bank gets 20% of its profits (Spain accounts for 14%). Britain’s third most powerful woman according to the BBC has now become Spain’s most influential in finance.