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…
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…
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…
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 (
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…
By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | Telefónica’s president César Alierta devoted his speech during the company’s general shareholder meeting to claim that markets are not considering the company’s growth potential, as well as to defend that Spain is “a very solvent country.” According to the data gathered by Link analysts, Alierta stressed Telefónica’s high dividend yield, which at current prices will be of 13,3% in 2012. In Alerta’s opinion, it…
After the news came in of French president François Hollande’s brief encounter with the ever irresistible forces of nature, I began to consider in all seriousness what my mother said about the just sworn-in European leader: “poor thing,” she had muttered during our daily London-Valencia FaceTime conference, which is motherly talk for the more common ‘that guy’s a loser’ remark. Indeed, he was struck by lightning twice in just hours. Here’s the…
NEW YORK | “Errors”, “sloppiness” and “bad judgements”. Whatever. The fact is that JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon, no matter what he pleads, is the ultimate responsible for the bank’s 2 billion dollars loss through risky trade with its own money. A big embarrassment that made their stock price plummet around one tenth of their value on Friday session dragging the rest of the banking sector. Washington, Wall Street and financial…
By Tania Suárez, in Madrid | The director of strategy and macroeconomics at Inverseguros SVB, Alberto Matellán, believes that austerity and growth are not only compatible but should be applied together. Mantellán thinks the European Central Bank could put again in use its monetary policy tools, such as the Securities Market Programme (SMP) or the Long-Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO). Should the ECB lower again interest rates for the euro zone? The…
Virgin Mobile Latin America VMLA, a portfolio company of ePlanet Capital, closed April with a round of extra finance of $26.5 million in new equity financing, the company announced in its latest public communication. The funds will go toward developing regional businesses and launch services in Chile. Investors include the Virgin Group and ePlanet Capital, CANEPA, Souter Investments and Hermes Growth Partners, headed by former Telefonica’s CEO Juan Villalonga. VMLA is a telecommunications operator established…