MADRID | By Francisco López | The risk premium has moved from being a huge torment for Spanish decision-makers, to making headlines showing a recovery of the international confidence in Spain’s economy. The interest rate of the Spanish 10-year bond is at its lowest since 2009, the differential with Germany is around 190 basis points and Ibex 35 widely exceeds 10,000 points.
MADRID | By The Corner Team | The General Retail Trade Index annual change at constant prices stood at 2.0% in November, two points and a half higher than that registered in October.
MADRID | By The Corner Team | The Spanish current account balance recorded a surplus of EUR 1.7 billion in October, after September’s small surplus of 0.1bn. Foreign trade is helping the recovery, helped by better competitiveness and domestic demand weakness.
MADRID | By Francisco López| By the end of November 57.6 millions of international tourists had arrived Spain with British, German and French leading the visits. It mean a 5% increase over the same period of 2012, but domestic demand still burdens results.
MADRID| By Fernando González Urbaneja| The Spanish banking industry has a very solid position and it is not easy to win market share from it. Citi, Barclays, BNP, all of them with commercial experience and financial muscle failed in the attempt. Now it is the turn of Venezuelan Banesco, which has just acquired Spanish bank NovaCaixaGalicia (NCG), stemmed from the country’s financial system restructuring and intervened by the state since October 2011, at €1.000 million.
MADRID | By Carlos Díaz Güell | Despite the Spanish residencial housing market weakness, main offer and demand variables are seemingly beginning to stabilize, pointing that real state starts and sales will reach a minimum level in 2013.
MADRID| By Julia Pastor | Spain’s credit quality and solvency is increasingly improving. The country’s risk premium closed at 219 basis points on Tuesday to its lowest level since June of 2012, and under Italy’s. Also Spanish 10-years bonds neared 4% yield, more than double than the German ones. Public debt investors do not have much better options.
MADRID| Fernando G. Urbaneja| Spanish leaders try to diminish the importance of corruption in the country’s political sphere. They say it is not a general practice, that cases in the public eye are manageable exceptions. But citizens do not seem to agree.
LONDON | By Moody’s Investors Service | Moody’s changed the outlook on Spain’s Baa3 government bond rating to stable from negative last Wednesday. Concurrently, Moody’s has affirmed Spain’s Baa3 government bond and (P)Prime-3 short-term rating.
MADRID | By Ben Sills at Reuters | Spain posted the first decline in November jobless claims since at least 1996 as economic activity stabilized after a five-year slump.