Crédito y Caución (Atradius) | Most businesses in Spain predict the greatest threats to business profitability in 2021 to include maintaining adequate cash flow, the effective collection of outstanding invoices and the containment of costs (reported by 43%,43% and 40% respectively). Despite the uncertainties of the pandemic more businesses expressed optimism than pessimism about the outlook for their customers’ credit worthiness in 2021.
Fernando Rodriguez | Sustainable investment in Spain amounted to 285,454 million euros in 2019, up 36% on the previous year, according to ‘Spainsif 2020 Study: Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Spain’. The study was prepared with the answers to a questionnaire provided by 76% of Spanish investment companies and 43% of international ones operating in Spain. 72.8% of the total figure – €207,571 million- is managed by Spanish companies, up 9% on the previous year.
Juan C. Palomino, Juan G. Rodríguez, Raquel Sebastian (ICAE) | Lockdown measures are likely to worsen cohesion in Europe both between countries and, especially, within countries. Our decomposition exercise shows that between-countries inequality will increase in Europe between 2.5% and 4.0%, while within-countries inequality will increase between 5.0% and 12.1%. In general, we find a greater increase of both poverty and inequality in Eastern and Southern Europe than in Northern and Central Europe.
Berta Ares, General Manager, BME Inntech | BME offers unregulated financial services such as trading, information, regulatory and wealthtech services. Our presence in the region focuses in Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia and Chile. We are present in all these countries, offering solutions and technology in the Wealth Management industry that range from advised and/or discretionary portfolio management to client relationship management solutions. In Colombia, we provide market access and order routing services for the Colombian stock exchange. Both in Colombia and Mexico, our services include information terminals to access real-time economic and financial information of capital markets.
“Let’s say you’re an insurance company and insuring people close to the sea. In Spain, for example, in La Manga del Mar Menor people have vacation homes in an area where sea levels are rising rapidly. If you are an insurance company with properties in areas such as this, this is a disaster. Or if you’re a global company with farmland in Almeria that requires lots of irrigation and Spain’s rainfall decreases dramatically and you can’t cultivate it, you take a massive hit.” The question of climate change and its impact is not a new one – but Antonio Cabrales suggests that there is a new solution, and it lies with the banks.
José Carlos González Vázquez (Professor in Commercial Law (UCM). Partner at MA Law Firm) | On September 7, the Official Gazette of the Spanish Parliament published the bill which will modify the consolidated text of the Capital Companies Act. This bill is basically a transposition of Directive (EU) 2017/828 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 May 2017 amending Directive 2007/36/EC as regards the encouragement of long-term shareholder engagement. However, some other proposals, not present in the European Directive, have been introduced. Among the most controversial ones is this dealing with the so-called loyalty shares: shareholders of listed companies are given double voting rights if they hold on to their shares for an uninterrupted period of two consecutive years. This means breaking away from the sacrosanct principle enshrined in our Company Law of “one share, one vote” .
Javier Ibáñez de Aldecoa and Eduard Llorens (CaixaBank Research ) | How have e-consumption habits evolved after the COVID-19 outbreak? We address this question using big data techniques and anonymised data from card payments carried out by CaixaBank’s 13.5 million customers. Our results confirm that the pandemic generated a significant, albeit short-lived, increase in the use of e-commerce. At the end of September e-commerce no longer showed any deviation from its growth trend of previous years.
Santander Corporate & Investment | A possible acquisition of 100% in cash of Banc Sabadell by BBVA would generate significant value for the shareholders of both banks. BBVA and Banco Sabadell confirmed this week that they are holding conversations about a possible merger of both entities. The resulting entity would have a market share of 24% in Spain in loans to customers and c.23% in customer deposits against 30% and 28%, respectively, in the case of the combination of Caixabank and Bankia.
Endesa has launched a project for the development of bunkering activities for maritime transport in its port terminal of the Bay of Algeciras (Cadiz). This will have a storage capacity of around 4,080 cubic meters and an annual managed energy volume of 1,100 GWh. With this capacity, the terminal would become the main LNG bunkering port station in Spain. The country multiplied by more than three its LNG bunkering operations in 2019, with a total of 195 that supplied a total of 81,704 cubic meters of LNG.
With this second payment, Spain has already received 10 billion euros via the SURE instrument out of the total €21.3 Bn Pedro Sánchez’s government requested and was later approved by the European institutions. The Community Executive has disbursed in this second round a total of €14 Bn to nine European countries. In addition to Spain, Italy (6.5 Bn), Greece (2 Bn), Croatia (510 M), Lithuania (300 M), Cyprus (250 M), Slovenia (200 M) and Malta and Latvia (120 M each) have received tranches from this fund.