Link Securities | Slovak central bank governor and European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council member Peter Kazimir said yesterday in an opinion piece reported by Bloomberg that market bets on two more rate cuts this year are not ‘completely misplaced’. However, he pointed out that they should not be taken as ‘a given or a reference scenario’. In that sense, Kazimir said that they (ECB) are on the way back…
Peter Goves (MFS Investment Management) | As widely expected, the ECB kept all three of its policy rates on hold at the neutral July meeting. The deposit rate therefore remains at 3.75% following the cut at the June meeting. The central bank still considers prevailing rates are contributing to lowering inflation and that monetary policy is keeping financing conditions restrictive. Future decisions will still ensure that the policy rates remain “sufficiently…
Link Securities | Expectations (economic sentiment) among major investors and analysts for the future of the German economy worsened in July, with the index measuring them falling from 47.5 points in June to 41.8 points, according to the German ZEW institute yesterday. FactSet consensus analysts had expected a slightly higher reading of 42.0 points. July’s decline was the first drop in a year for this indicator. The decline was mainly…
Alphavalue / Divacons | Germany’s 2024 supplementary budget foresees an increase in previously planned new debt by €11.3 billion to a total of €50.3 billion, according to finance ministry sources. The German cabinet will approve on 17 July the draft supplementary budget for 2024, the draft budget for 2025, the financial plan until 2028 and the economic package. The German government foresees record investments of €78 billion in 2025, including…
The inflation rate in the Eurozone stood at 2.5% year-on-year in June, one tenth of a percentage point lower than the rise in prices observed in May, according to the second reading of the data published by the EU statistics office, Eurostat, while in the European Union (EU) as a whole the rate fell by one tenth of a percentage point to 2.6%. The slight moderation in price increases in…
Link Securities | Eurostat published yesterday that industrial production in the Eurozone declined 0.6% in the month of May relative to April, in seasonally adjusted data. The reading beat the 1.0% drop expected by FactSet’s consensus of analysts. By industry type in May, output fell 1.0% for intermediate goods, 1.2% for capital goods and 1.8% for consumer durables. Conversely, output rose 0.8% for energy and 1.6% for consumer non-durables. Year-on-year,…
Bankinter | Iberdrola (IBE) is in the final straight to bid for the British electricity company Electricity North West Limited (ENWL). Iberdrola, on the one hand, and Engie and Quebec , on the other, will present their binding bids for ENWL on 24 July. ENWL is one of the ten largest distribution networks in the UK , controlling the North West of England. The American fund has approached Iberdrola offering…
Intermoney | In sovereign debt, the spread between the OAT and the Bund seems to be normalising and currently stands at 66 bp. As we have been explaining from IM, the governing coalition will have little room to expand spending and widen the deficit, considering that Brussels had put France in the excessive deficit procedure. What’s more, the next French government would have to stump up €15 billion in additional…
Link Securities | The real estate alliance between Mapfre and Swiss Life Group has expanded, as both companies have reached an agreement to transfer two more properties to their real estate funds, the digital portal elEconomista.es reported. They are located in Madrid and Paris and have a combined value of almost 140 million euros. Specifically, the Spanish insurer has transferred the building at Avenida de Burgos 12, located in the…
Matthieu de Clermont Head of Insurance and Regulatory Strategies (Allianz GI) | Amid a hung parliament, should investors hang around? While a hung parliament was expected, the second round of the French election still delivered a shock result: the far-right National Rally was pushed into third place in a result that triggers days if not weeks of negotiations between the parties to form a government. With the most seats, France’s…