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…
Fernando González Urbaneja | Irish unification is likely to be on the horizon later this decade. Demographics and politics are transformative. And both are on the side of unification. Last week’s elections in the six northern counties point to changing majorities. Unification has not occupied the campaign debates, but it looms large as it is part of the permanent and structural agenda. Republican parties are now dominant against those who…
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…
Norbolsa | Telefonica closed an agreement with Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone to share their networks and provide their customers with the same coverage in 2,000 additional German locations. Through this alliance, the German mobile network operators are implementing new initiatives to share infrastructure and improve mobile coverage in rural areas. In the same vein, the three operators also agreed in 2021 to provide coverage in those areas that did not…
Crédito y Caución expects the Russian invasion of Ukraine to cut Eurozone GDP growth by one percentage point to 2.9% in 2022, due to supply chain disruption, higher commodity prices and the adverse impact on business and consumer confidence. This impact assessment, subject to a high level of uncertainty, is based on two assumptions: that the conflict will not continue beyond 2022 and that sanctions will be strengthened but not…
Crédito y Caución (Atradius) | Global GDP growth is expected to slow in 2022, as price pressures are rising due to supply chaindisruptions, strong consumer demand and the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In some markets, we already saw a partial return to normality in 2021 in insolvency developments. Forinstance, in Spain, Italy and Czech Republic, insolvencies started to rise in 2021 after they declined in 2020. For the majority of markets, however,…