Interviews

bankia consejeros

Spain’s national High Court charges against 33 directors of Bankia

By Tania Suárez, in Madrid | In a context of economic crisis, where everybody feels on the verge, people are demanding justice. And justice, for a change, is doing its homework. Mirroring the process affecting Barclays, now is the turn of Bankia. The political party led by Rosa Díez, Unión Progreso y Democracia (UPyD), took legal action against the Spanish bank and filed a complaint with the Audiencia Nacional, the…


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“Confidence in Spain’s banks will improve”

home loan with bad credit rating By www.valenciaplaza.com | Citigroup strategist José Luis Martínez believes the importance of the delay in the Spanish request for capital to bailout the country's banking sector has been overblown by commentators. Martínez, though, worries about the cost of the short-term credit for Spain. To what extent the results of the latest audits on the banking sector have improved confidence in the Spanish banks? Confidence…


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Three silver lines in the euro sky

LONDON | You needn't be a bureaucrat in the payroll of any of the myriad of euro institutions to launch a campaign that points at the various strengths the common currency area still possesses. Day after day, whether it's new developments in politics or foreign direct investment balances, some piece of data brings up the surprising resilience that wows non-euro observers. Amid the sorry situation of the euro estate, JP…


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The art of deceiving the West without letting it to collapse

BEIJING | China is very good at persuading the international community. Current Chinese leaders had a great master: the strategist Sun Tzu who left a legacy on the art of seducing and wining. No matter what kind of cooperation Beijing has in mind, their main aim is to ensure that a win-win resolution is reached. Cooperating at the expenses of loosing some advantages is not an option. Therefore, one should not…


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The euro, the mistake

By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | Why did the euro seem to work so splendidly after just a few years …to be about to crash now with such almighty noise? Here I suggest an explanation, which is simple and incomplete and yet, crucial. In the first graphic, we see the Spanish real GDP in red and Germany's in blue both at annual growth rates. The drop in the 1990s is…


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Berlin is growing weary of saving the euro

text your ex back MADRID | For the first time since the crisis unfolded, Germany is starting to cast serious doubts on the euro zone sustainability. Acting as paymaster general involves such a woeful toll as to think twice before continuing to foot a growing bill likely to snowball out of control. It is under the uneasy impression that money spent on saving others is simply burned off. The temporary…


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Helga Jung: “We’ll get out of the crisis with a fiscal and political integration”

Helga Jung is the first woman to enter the board of Allianz, the largest insurance pool in the world, in the center of German finance. The group became Allianz Societas Europaea (SE) in 2006. With more than 78 million customers, 142,000 employees and a global presence in 70 countries, Allianz obtained an operating income of €7.9 billion in 2011. Its assets under third parties management are of €1.281 billion. What risks…


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Kuiki Studio, a Spanish idea that had to go to Hong Kong

BEIJING | Kuiki Studio has found in Asia the opportunity to develop a business model not possible if it were based in Spain. In just 6 months the internet solutions company Kuiki Studio ceased to be a project in the minds of a small group of friends to become a Spanish company based in Hong Kong, with clients across Asia and Europe and having a 10% of the company owned by…


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Euro2012 begins

MADRID | A pinch of humour can go a long way, indeed. These guys made headlines today in the very BBC (Irish footie fans), Business Insider (


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When words matter more than substance

MADRID | All of the sudden, the feeling things might be spinning out of control has cast a gloomy mood in Spain. For a country lavishly living on others savings, finding itself short of cash has come as a shock-horror revelation. It now faces the unsparing rigour of lying in the hands of fickle and merciless markets. The deep-rooted assumption that confidence gap would be bridged as soon as the…