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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
A curated selection of links we hope can enlighten us all; some come from our corner, some do from other corners of the net. And as always, our comment widgets are anxious to get your suggestions. Anglo-Saxon banker-bashing, this time from one of them! Why a general strike in Spain is not what once was Fed’s bank stress tests? Don’t trust them The day the UK felt vulnerAAAble A review of…
MADRID | The general strike announced for March 29 will be the ninth in Spain’s modern democracy, the 12th if we start counting from the day dictator Francisco Franco died. The general strike is part of unions’ mythology, meaning a show of extra impact and a demonstration of power. There were revolutionary general strikes in 1917 and 1934, even in July 1936 after the coup d’état that was later called Alzamiento,…
MADRID | Former colleagues at the Bank of England will read with some sense of shock what William White told the Spanish financial newspaper Expansión during an interview with one of its editors, Miquel Roig. Or perhaps not. After all, as Roig points out in today’s edition, “‘Central bankers are a strong brotherhood of mutual admiration,’ former ECB president Jean Claude Trichet used to say. William White was the one who dared…
By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | The Greek restructuring has been a most impressive achievement. But it has fallen only on private investors’ heads. Public bondholders, like the European Central Bank (ECB), refused to take in their share of losses as everyone else did. When the EBC’s governor Mario Draghi was asked about the ECB’s special protection, turning the central bank into a super-privileged investor, he replied: “I can answer…
YOUNG AND BOLD: THE NEW SPANISH ENTREPRENEURS | NEW YORK | Starting from scratch, Daniel Gutiérrez Alías one year ago created ShakingAsia, a B2B Spanish consulting company based in Tokyo. This 31-year-old savvy IT engineer from Madrid was for a long time funded by his FFF (Familiy, Friends and Fools). Now he is still relying on bootstrapping but has clients such as Red Karaoke or Minube. Hard-working and determined, he wants to shake…