Interviews

Interviews 16th May 2012

Spain’s recovery is on its way, Telefónica’s chairman assures investors

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…

Interviews 16th May 2012

François Hollande is a loser

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…

Interviews 14th May 2012

Too big to fail, also too big to govern?

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…

Interviews 11th May 2012

SVB’s Mantellán: “Cutting waste in the Spanish public sector will help growth”

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…

Interviews 8th May 2012

Former Telefonica’s CEO Juan Villalonga enters board of Virgin Mobile LatAm

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…

Interviews 3rd May 2012

“Show me the money” also applies for her

NEW YORK | For each dollar a man earns in the U.S., the average female professional gets only 80 cents, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only twelve out of 500 companies in the Fortune index are run by women. Apparently it will take them 40 years to match their peers in the corporate world, non-profit organization Catalyst points out. The truth is that women who have reached the…

Interviews 19th April 2012

Something Canadian that Spain may like: public-private partnerships

By Rose Marie Losier, director general at the Canada-Spain Chamber of Commerce | Public infrastructure in Canada has been aging in recent years and the country has seen the need to replace them. In this context, governments at both federal and provincial level, have found in models of public-private partnership (PPP) an interesting formula that allows them to leverage funding and innovation with support from the public sector. What are PPPs? The public-private…

Interviews 17th April 2012

The euro zone’s gross debt to fall in 2013

By Carlos Díaz Guell, in Madrid | The crisis has led to a rapid accumulation of public debt as a result of the deterioration in economic growth, the functioning of automatic stabilisers, fiscal incentives and public capital support for the banking sector. In the euro zone, the European Central Bank estimates that the ratio of public debt as a percentage of GDP has risen 22 points since 2007 so it reached…

Interviews 16th April 2012

“The last real estate bubble still to burst in Europe is France’s”

MADRID | In an interview with the Spanish business daily El Economista, head of the Absolute Return department at Edmond de Rothschild Benjamin Melman said the Spanish government’s austerity plan is credible, but the markets doubt that it will help the economy grow. Unlike most market participants, Melman explained why he is more worried about France than about Spain or Italy. After the sovereign risk rally that we saw last week, would…

Interviews 11th April 2012

Time to cut Frankenstein over-regulation on Spanish businesses

Fernando del Pino Calvo-Sotelo, in Madrid | Through the years, central, regional and local politicians have created, out of the blue, hundreds of thousands of laws, rules and regulations with which we all are obliged to comply. As far as I know, the Official State Gazette publishes 250.000 pages a year; the regional ones, 800.000 a year. You read it right: no typo there. One million pages a year. Maybe in…

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