Renta 4 | 1-. The UK Competition regulator, the CMA, has given the green light to Cellnex’s purchase of 6,000 towers from Hutchinson in the region. The deal is subject to the Spanish firm’s sale of 1,000 sites which overlap geographically with those of Hutchinson. 2-. From what we can glean from the communication, the 1,000 sites which will be subject to being sold off correspond to part of the…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The European and US deployment to help Ukraine and stifle Putin’s Russia is not as rhetorical or irrelevant as some imagined a week ago. Putin’s unilateral and criminal war is being met with the patriotism of Ukrainians, determined to defend their country and their freedom, but also with the active revulsion of most of the community of nations. The debate in the United Nations Extraordinary Assembly…
J.P. Marín-Arrese | Ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, the US has shown utter disdain for Russia. It flouted the pledge made to Gorbatchev to keep former Warsaw Pact countries out of NATO so that Russia could have a security buffer zone along its frontiers. It openly invited the Ukrainian government to disregard the Minsk agreement, which was brokered to ensure that Ukraine would remain neutral. John Kerry, the former…
Germany’s coalition parties agreed on Wednesday a roughly 13 billion euro package of measures to help households cope with surging energy prices, including scrapping a surcharge levied on electricity bills to support green power, as reported by Reuters. Energy prices in Germany have soared in the last year, and fears of an escalation of the crisis between Ukraine and gas supplier Russia are set to push them higher still. Germany’s…
Intermoney | The EU cannot replace Russian energy supplies in the short term since, in a normal year, as was 2019, 46.7% of the solid fuels, 41.1% of the natural gas and 26.9% of the oil it imported came from Russia. Figures that are biased upwards by Germany, given that, for example, in 2021, 42.83% of Spain’s natural gas exports came from Algeria compared to the 8.91% that came from…
Marco Troiano (Scope Ratings) | At the end of September 2021, the combined exposure of BIS reporting banks to Ukrainian residents stood at USD 13.5bn gross of risk transfers, with French and Austrian banks accounting for about half of the total. This does not pose any credit concerns. Only a handful of European banking groups maintain a meaningful local presence, including Raiffeisen’s Bank Aval, BNP Paribas’ Ukrsibbank, and PKO’s Kredobank. While…
Jorge Mario Uribe Gil via The Conversation | High electricity prices have been at the center of public opinion in the world and particularly in Europe for several months. The huge upward variations that have been recorded since the first half of 2021, and that promise to become more pronounced as the winter progresses, threaten the overall price stability of the region. This rise may lead to situations of energy…
Intermoney | The EU is the area that would be worst off in the event of a war in Ukraine. At this point, it is worth remembering that Russia was the first supplier of the EU in terms of energy raw materials in a normal year such as 2019. In that year, 46.7% of the EU’s imports of solid fuels (i.e. coal), 41.1% of those related to natural gas and…
The number of registered workers in the Eurozone exceeded in the fourth quarter of 2021 the figure recorded in the same period of 2019, thus recovering for the first time the level of employment prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, according to data published by Eurostat. According to the EU office, the number of employed people increased in the fourth quarter by 0.5% in the Eurozone and in the European Union…
Ali Batuhan Barlas / Adem Ileri / Seda Guler Mert / Sinem Senel / Yesim Ugurlu Solaz (BBVA Research) | Industrial Production (IP) surprised onthe upside, increasing 14.4%yoy in calendar adjustedterms (vs market expectation of 0.8%). IP also rose by 1.6% mom, resulting in a 4.3% quarter-on-quarter growth in 4Q21 (vs 2.0% qoq in 3Q21). Both retail sales and turn over index in the services sector suggest that consumption remains…