Fernando Rodríguez | The season of annual shareholders’ meetings is just around the corner and Spain’s major listed companies are urging the Government to legislate with the utmost urgency so that they can hold virtual shareholders’ meetings with full legal coverage. “We don’t have the leeway we had last year, which was justified by the Covid19 pandemic, and there is a risk that the decisions made at the meetings could be challenged,” sources close to this initiative, which is supported by at least forty companies, told Consenso del Mercado.

For months, and from different sides of the spectrum, including the government’s own partner Podemos, there has been a demand for the design of a direct aid package aimed at those companies whose viability is at risk. Podemos’ proposal includes a fund with an initial contribution of €8 Bn. It is not known if the amount of the direct aid package will be adjusted to this proposition or not, but at least there will be aid.

Before the pandemic, practically everything in Spain, economy, politics, social coexistence, revolved around the Catalan dilemma. It was expected that elections in Catalonia would clarify the region’s political future and bring some stability to the Spanish political scene. However, the results of the regional elections held yesterday failed to clear up the doubts of the last decade. The most voted party was the Socialist, but the sum of the Catalan separatist parties has obtained enough seats to form a government.

Brussels has raised the Spanish GDP growth forecast for this year to 5.6%, which is two tenths of a percentage point higher than the previous estimate. This would make the Spanish economy the fastest growing of the 27 EU countries, ahead of France (+5.5%). That said, the European Commission (EC) also increases the risk of business failures in the sectors most affected by the new restrictions, with the potential for increasing unemployment and cutting production capacity.

The social network Telegram has been crowded with groups to buy and sell shares in a coordinated way imitating the actions of US Reddit forum to boost the stock price of GameStop. The Tubacex case, a steel pipe manufacturing company, has been the first target of a group of imitators in Spain known in Telegram as “Spanish WS Bets.” After that move, the company soared 15% in the stock market an caught the attention of the National Securities Market Commission.