MADRID | “It is time to resort to the International Monetary Fund or the European rescue fund,” wrote in the January edition of Revista Consejeros Aristóbulo de Juan, former Bank of Spain's director general of inspection. Even Banco Santander's chairman Emilio Botín, who's always shown his antipathy to salvage competitors with his money or the taxpayers', acknowledged that the Spanish banking sector needed some €40 billion in European aid to…
MADRID | You can fool someone for a long run. You may fool many people for a while. But you cannot pretend to fool everybody forever. Claims on Saturday that the deal only amounted to European lending for Spanish banks did not stand up to the week-end erosion. It was clear from the start that the money was to be channelled through a public body and fully covered by a…
MADRID | Just a few days before the partial rescue of the Spanish banking sector was announced, Amado Franco talked to journalist Carles Francino during an interview broadcast by SER. Franco is president at one of the largest and healthiest cajas or Spanish savings banks. He is 66 years old and has spent 42 working at Ibercaja. He has been auditor, branch manager, executive, CEO and President since 2004. Franco is a…
LONDON | Germany finally met its match in Spain. And the outcome of the clash, as for Monday's market reaction, was unsurprisingly ugly, leaving the future of the euro project in deeper waters than ever before. Naysayers are meant to have a hard time running against the tide of general opinion, or so they were portrayed in the now past European political modern tradition. They were the protesters, the champions…
http://goexback.com/ How to win back your ex By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | Everyone's talking about it. The financial support demand or the bailout that Spain has requested from its European partners last weekend in order to, at last, recapitalise the country’s banking industry is admittedly one of the most significant episodes in Spain’s recent economic history. After the International Monetary Fund published on Saturday early in the morning its stability…
By Julia Pastor, in Madrid.- El Corte Inglés, the well-known Spanish department stores brand has had no alternative but to cut its food, drugs and perfumery products prices by 20%. Since the crisis began, their most direct competitors in this segment, the Valencia-based supermarket Mercadona and the French chain Carrefour have entered into a price war in which the retail company was out by their own choice. Now things have…
What To Say Through Text To Get Your Ev Back By valenciaplaza.com, in Valencia | José Carrasco is private banking director at Banco Madrid in Valencia. Carrasco believes the European Central Bank buying Spanish bonds would reassure investors and negative headlines would then recede allowing foreign capital to go back to the country's market, where good value still abounds. What is your view on the European stock markets? With France…
Divorce Advice How To Get Over Your Ex During the 15 years of real state boom, prices and salaries in Spain rose drastically, causing a strong loss of national companies' competitiveness. In the last four years, the country has regained 13 of 16 points, which means a 70% of the total, largely because of lower unit labour costs, the financial newspaper Cinco Días said in its Thursday edition. The Bank of Spain competitiviness…
By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | The solution proposed by the Spanish president Mariano Rajoy to inject capital directly into troubled entities, with no need of intervening the whole of the countries' economy is gaining momentum. It was the International Monetary Fund the first organisation which gave a boost to the idea when its managing director, Christine Lagarde, assured that Spain did not require a rescue. Last week, Mario Draghi’s…
MADRID | We have a case for demanding some support in resisting the current run on us, our most solid argument being that something nasty might happen to the euro should we fall in the abyss. The one based on the merits of performing our homework seems less convincing. For all the reforms undertaken, we still have a long way to go in redressing a dismal record. Sheer lack of money…