Fernando Barciela | Madrid leftwing Mayor Manuela Carmena (Ahora Madrid) upset the markets and the media last week with her decision to fire credit rating agencies Standard & Poor’s (S&P) and Fitch, effective from 2016.
After seven years of crisis, Spain’s economic model is tending towards what it was in the past. The country ‘s tourism industry is a leader in terms of competitiveness. Furthermore, last summer the sector performed the best it has for a decade.
After recently raising Spain’s sovereign ratings to ‘BBB+’ from ‘BBB’, S&P has also improved its stance on some of the country’s top banks. S&P’s upgrades comes in the same week as the Madrid local authorities said they could not renew the contracts with that agency.
Although the Bank of Spain expects economic growth to slow to 0.8% in the third quarter from 1.0% in the second, international investors are still betting on Spain. Foreign investment outflow fell to 1.5 Bn€ in July compared from 5.5 Bn a year earlier, according to the central bank’s figures.
UBS | The regulator CNMC has kicked off an investigation on the competitive status of the Spanish power generation market. Endesa and Gas Natural Fenosa, the companies most exposed to it.
Spain’s government will change the way the banks’ DTAs are taxed to remove discrepancies with European law. The reform’s impact on the lenders will be €420 M in taxes against €28 Bn of DTAs.
Year 2015, with all the problems and possible scenarios, will mark a new record in terms of listed companies’ earnings, exceeding the 32 billion euros registered in 2014.
Spanish politics will be under the spotlight this week in Europe. The most likely consequence is that Spain’s risk premium will increase and the Ibex will underperform relative to other European stock exchanges.
UBS | Pro-independence parties in Catalonia have won a majority of seats – but not of the total of votes cast. As a result, we would advise investors to remain cautious about buying Spanish sovereign debt until some clarity emerges over the next steps of the new regional government.
Parties staunchly supporting independence have won the elections to the regional Parliament only in terms of seats, not votes.