According to a strategic report published by its UK subsidiary, Santander acknowledges that the fact of avoiding a ‘divorce’ without an agreement helped to eliminate a significant source of uncertainty during the first quarter of the year. However, this will not prevent an impact as the year progresses.
Endesa, Enagás and Mapfre are the three Spanish companies that offer the highest dividend yield, 9.7%, 9.5% and 7.5%, respectively. According to the analysis prepared by the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU), and reported by the Europa Press agency, these three companies are followed by Red Eléctrica, Naturgy and Zardoya-Otis, with a yield of over 5%.
Abengoa would have demanded the Solvency Support Fund for Strategic Companies from the Spanish government, a tool designed to help companies affected by the pandemic, for the rescue of its company Abenewco 1, to which it transferred the most valuable assets and activities of the broken parent company. The group would try to preserve these assets and to keep operating a subsidiary in which almost 13,000 employees are still working.
The Social Security gained an average of 9,328 foreign affiliates in February (+0.4%). As a result, the second month of the year closed with 2,053,997 immigrant workers registered in the system, as reported Thursday by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration. Of the total number of foreign workers, 1,309,920 came from countries outside the EU (63.77%) and the rest (744,077) from EU countries (36.05%).
Telefónica has been awarded 40 MHz blocks in the 3.6 GHz band and 20 MHz in the 700 MHz band in the latest spectrum auction in the UK. This is the second one held in that country to accelerate the deployment of the new mobile technology. To do so, it has had to pay £448 M (near €532 M). This amount is much lower than initially estimated by the market, which had calculated that Telefónica’s investment in new spectrum in the UK would amount to £700 million (approximately €820 M).
When it comes to improving the rental market, the parties in the government coalition, PSOE-Unidas Podemos, have very different conceptions. Both agree to include mechanisms to help control rental prices on an ad hoc basis and in the most stressed areas, but Pablo Iglesias’ party is demanding the establishment of limits on rental market prices, while the socialist part of the government has confirmed that they prefers to fiscally stimulate those owners who rent below the prices set by reference indexes.
Banco Sabadell | A federal court in Mexico has temporarily suspended the government’s legislative reform for the electricity sector. The reform would prioritise energy production by state-owned company CFE when it comes to feeding energy into the grid. In turn this would harm private renewable generation firms which, by producing more cheaply, would enter the market earlier. The impact of for the Spanish firms with presence in the Mexican market, Iberdrola, Acciona and Naturgy is limited.
Claudia Canals and Oriol Carreras Baquer (Caixabank)| Given the importance of investment in intangibles for boosting the digital transition, we wonder what impact NGEU will have on this type of investment. To answer this question, first we estimate the average increase in the relative weight of investment in intangibles as a proportion of GDP in Spain between 1995 and 2017. We then measure the impact that NGEU will have on investment in intangibles, considering in the calculation the carry-over effect that this programme could have on private investment.
T. C.| “Spaniards are peculiar, they want to live like Americans but they think like Cubans” explained a USA ambassador on leaving Madrid. And he was right. So nobody can find it strange that finally a group of “Bolivarians” are part of the Government of Spain. People who, a short while ago, used to denounce the Spanish political caste and now have made their leader’s wife a Cabinet minister; without anybody batting an eyelash.
The upturn in expected profits in 2022 for listed companies in Europe and Spain began in November, after the announcement of effective vaccines against the virus. Since then the improvement in expectations for the coming year has been “relatively modest”. Specifically, analysts forecast that profit expectations for Ibex firms in 2022 will be 30% below those expected in February 2020, although they also expect the negative impact of the pandemic on the profits of listed companies in 2022 to be lower than in 2021, according to the Bank of Spain.