Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez called snap elections for April 28th after holding an extraordinary cabinet meeting in Madrid. The ballot follows Sanchez’s defeat in parliament over his 2019 fiscal plans. Madrid avoids May 26 “Super Sunday,” with local, regional and EU elections the same day.
On Tuesday Banco Santander announced that it will not exercise the repurchase of its contingent convertible bonds (CoCos) – the AT1 – of 1.5 billion euros and coupon of 6.25%. The bank, which referred to financial reasons, had already warned in its presentation of results that it would only make the call if conditions were adequate.
Red Eléctrica, the company which manages Spain’s high tension electricity cables, has agreed to buy 89.68% of Hispasat, the largest operator of satellite infrastructure by volume in Spain and Portugal, for 949 M€ from Abertis Infraestructuras. REE had already tried to buy Hispasat at the beginning of last year, even reaching a pre-agreement with Abertis. But the deal was frustrated by the corporate operations in Abertis and the disagreement of the previous government.
Fernando G. Urbaneja | A short list of urgent and possible reforms to regenerate and modernise Spanish democracy would include improving the quality and reputation of state institutions, especially the administration of justice and those entities described as independent, with the Bank of Spain at the front of the queue.
Joan Tapia (Barcelona) | BBVA says that Spain could grow 2.4% this year (it grew 2.5% in 2018) and 2% in 2020. This would create 800,000 jobs over the two years and unemployment would fall to 12.6% (compared to 15.3% in 2018). Yet, BBVA also warns that the probability of an accident has increased. Spain’s public debt is 12 points above the eurozone average, around 100% of GDP. Moreover, the Catalan situation is explosive as it represents 16% of the population and 19% of GDP.
House sales have been posting double-digit figures for the past three years, there is strong growth in construction and prices are clearly on the up. What will the future bring? As explained in the next report from Caixabank Research, this positive trend is expected to continue in the sector, both because of the Spanish economy’s good performance and also the healthy state of the industry itself.
The National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC in its acronym in Spanish) is processing a circular so that all energy companies which supply electricity, gas and hydrocarbons meet six ratios which constrain their level of debt and dividends in relations to the volume of assets, cash flow, EBITDA or financial costs.
According to the National Institute of Statistics, the unemployment rate at the end of 2018 was 14.45%, 2.1 percentage points less than in 2017 and its lowest level for 10 years. For its part, employment grew by 566,200 people in 2018, almost 3% more than 2017, securing its fifth consecutive annual increase and the largest increase since 2006, when 686,200 jobs were created in Spain.
The three main Spanish electricity companies (Endesa, Iberdrola and Naturgy) have reached agreement in principle with the Ministry of Ecological Transition to close the nuclear plants in Spain. In this way, the closure of the active plants would be scaled, so that they would close their operations gradually between 2025 and 2035.