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.
MADRID | By Ana Fuentes | As the Spanish property sector becomes fashionable again, we set our eyes in one of the most-commented moves these days: listed developer and owner Colonial’s €1.26m capital increase and €1bn debt restructuring. President of GBS Finanzas Pedro Gómez de Baeza managed to form a complex puzzle including the entrance of billionaire industrialist Juan Miguel Villar Mir with a 24.4% stake. Mr Gómez de Baeza joins us to talk about an “extremely challenging” operation that began in 2008 and only bore fruit at the third attempt, but also shows a changing trend.
MADRID | By Fernando Barciela| In the EU of 28 each telecom market is different. That is one of the reasons explaining why it is very difficult for Europe to reach a reduced market of just three operators like the US, as Luis Solana said. Another challenge for the sector in the region is to push technologies up to avoid it becomes a simple ‘utility’. At the moment, Telefonica tries to help the industry gathering new ideas for startups in all the company’s territory- Spain, UK, Germany, LatAm and so on- via its entrepreunership device Wayra.
MADRID | By Fernando Barciela | As the election day approaches, we bring you a series of special interviews focused on economic perspectives for the EU citizens and companies. Today we focus on the telecom sector, which is experiencing a deep transformation in the continent. Former chairman of Spanish Telefonica Luis Solana, currently responsible for the company’s entrepreneurship activities, comments on the main challenges ahead, as well as the need of surveillancance over the EU banking and energy sectors, and the inevitable downsizing of the welfare state in the region. Nonetheless, he was a socialist elected MP in Spain for five years during the transition period.
FRANKFURT | By Lidia Conde | Co-manager at Europe’s leading travel group TUI Oliver Dörschuck considers that “Spain is by far the most important tourist destination for TUI and its clients.” However, for him what matters most today is not the destination, but the hotel, which has to bring the best experience to the client.
NEW YORK | Guest post by Evan Horowitz | Do you ever feel like some customers can’t tell the difference between you and your competitors? I once worked with a leading office supply retailer in the US. They confided to me that they did research where they stopped customers in their stores and asked, “What store are you in?” Many customers named the chain’s major competitor. From a unique customer experience to lowering the price, there are many ways of standing out. The secret is to choose only one.