Naturgy’s main shareholder, Criteria, insists it will only make its position official about the tender offer for the company by IFM just when the time comes. The government also must express its opinion on the operation. At this moment they are leaning towards vetoing the Australian fund entry in Naturgy to safeguard national interests.
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.
Heathrow Airport Limited is controlled by a consortium led by Ferrovial with a 25% stake, Qatar Investment (20% of the capital), Caisse du Quebec (12.62%) and Singapore’s GIC fund (11.2%). The partners have already activated new urgent lines of financing for a total of 850 million euros. Heathrow wants to increase prices, and the regulatory body (CAA) is receptive to the request. But it wants the dividend cut to shareholders to be extended.
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.
Josep Mestres Domènech (CaixaBank Research)| In times of crisis, the reduction in employment traditionally occurred in Spain through a significant destruction of jobs, while in periods of expansion job creation was rapid. This has not been the case in this crisis. For the first time, the declines in GDP have been accompanied by a much smaller reduction in employment. This is not only due to the unique nature of this crisis, which originated in the health sphere, but also due to a very different response from economic policy.
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.
Some 1,044,898 internationals enrolled at Spanish institutions in the 2018-2019 academic year. Their overall economic impact on the Spanish economy amounts to near €3.8 Bn and the multiplier effect for student spend is 2.27, which means that for each euro spent on their academic program, these international students spent an additional 1.27 euros on a broad range of sectors of the national economy, explains the study The Economic Impact of International Students in Spain, promoted by ICEX and Eduespaña.
ACS, through its subsidiary Cobra, has been awarded 480 MW in the auction held to assign new licenses for offshore wind power facilities off the coast of the UK. The project will involve an investment of €510 M during the 10 years it will take to develop and build the plant before the wind turbines come into operation for an estimated period of 60 years. ACS has beaten other bids from large electricity companies such as Iberdrola in this auction, the first major British auction of wind farm licenses in more than a decade.
Spain has fallen 17 tenths of a point and six places in The Economist’s democratic quality index, although it remains in the “full” democracy category. The country has never failed to be a “full” democracy since the index was created 15 years ago. It has a score of 8.12. Furthermore, “democracy received a big blow in 2020” at a global level, stated the study. Almost 70% of the countries examined have regressed in “democratic freedoms” due to the restrictions on civil liberties caused by the fight against the pandemic.