The new leader of the Partido Popular (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has promised the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to fulfil “all the milestones negotiated by the Spanish Government” for the receipt of the Next Generation Funds, “even if Pedro Sánchez does not inform us of anything”. The meeting between the two focused “on Spain’s economic issues”, a serious concern for the PP and Brussels, since…
Bankinter | Cellnex is negotiating an agreement with Brookfield Asset Management to make a joint bid for Deutsche Telekom’s telecommunications towers affiliate. The deal consists of a group of 40.600 towers in Germany and Austria, worth close to 20 billion euros. The process for lodging bids has already started and will extend over the coming weeks. Bankinter analyst team’s opinion: We foresee the news having a neutral impact on the…
Caixabank Research | Surprisingly, GDP grew by 2.6% quarter-on-quarter and by 11.9% year-on-year thanks to the strength of private consumption and the recovery in tourism. This result suggests that our current forecast for GDP growth for the year as a whole (4.2%) may prove to be too conservative. However, given the risk of a deterioration due to the impact of the conflict in Ukraine and the cooling of demand from…
On Wednesday 18 May, European Commission commissioners finally agreed to submit a proposal to European countries on Monday 23 May to suspend public debt and deficit targets for 2023, for the fourth consecutive year. The measure, which will still have to be validated by the member states, gives countries such as Spain an additional grace period to get their public accounts back on track after the Covid bill. The European…
Eurostat | The euro area annual inflation rate was 7.4% in April 2022, stable compared to March. A year earlier, the rate was 1.6%. European Union annual inflation was 8.1% in April 2022, up from 7.8% in March. A year earlier, the rate was 2.0%. These figures are published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. The lowest annual rates were registered in France, Malta (both 5.4%) and…
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes that the debate on whether or not to return to fiscal rules in the European Union is more timely than ever. Now the continent is going through a “second economic crisis” due to the war in Ukraine, after a first one due to the pandemic from which we have not yet recovered. Gita Gopinath, deputy director general of the IMF, said the new fiscal…
The Austrian utility has been the winner of the large bid organised by the Spanish renewable energy fund Q Energy. The firm has acquired a platform with 82 MW in operation and more than 4 GW under development, valued at over 1 billion euros, in one of the most important renewable energy deals of the year in Spain. The assets are located mainly in Castilla La Mancha and Andalusia. Of…
Crédito y Caución (Atradius) | After an uncertain start into 2022 due to a new wave of the pandemic, emerging market economies (EMEs) face new headwinds triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Growth in EMEs as a whole is forecast to decline from 6.9% in 2021 to 3.7% in 2022. The events in Ukraine come on top of other issues, such as supply chain bottlenecks renewed Covid infections in some…
BancaMarch | Telefónica (TEF) Tech, the information technology and digital transformation affiliate of the Spanish telecoms operator has announced the purchase of BE-Terna. The latter is a multinational firm offering services in the cloud and specialising in digital transformation. The acquisition, one of the biggest deals made by Telefónica Tech, will be closed for some 375 million euros (approx 1,4% of Telefónica’s stock market capital). The purchase will strengthen its…
Spain was the country that suffered the biggest monthly fall in retail sales in March, with a decline of 4%. In the euro area as a whole, the contraction was 0.4% compared with the previous month, when it had risen by 0.4 percentage points. Meanwhile, in the EU as a whole it fell by 0.2%, after having risen by 0.3% in February. The data published today by Eurostat also shows…