A.J.A. | An Argentine friend of mine once asked me why I thought his country was not coming back from the precipice. “To put it simply, Alfredo, if a country’s greatest pride is Maradona’s “hand of God” against England…. It’s fucked.” He nodded, silently. There was little to discuss. Yesterday Spain had its own “hand of God”, one of those images for the gallery destined to mark an era. To…
Cement consumption in Spain grew by 11% in 2021, to 14.9 million tons, which is the highest figure in the last ten years. The sector expects this trend to continue in 2022, when it expects another additional 5% increase, according to data from the sector’s employers’ association, Oficemen. The figure, however, is 27% below that of 2011, when it was still in full decline due to the bursting of the…
About 1.4 million people in Spain are at serious risk of financial exclusion due to the inability to access banking services, according to a study by the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU) published Wednesday. The absence of bank offices and the lack of capabilities and digital skills to operate in ATMs or online are the main factors converging amongst those over 65 years old and residents in municipalities with…
BBVA Group posted a recurring profit of €5.07 billion in 2021, the highest in the past ten years, thanks to the positive evolution of revenues and lower loan-loss provisions. Including non-recurring impacts, the net attributable profit rose to €4.65 billion, 3.6 times higher than the €1.31 billion registered in 2020. In terms of growth it acquired a record of almost nine million new customers. The net tangible book value per…
Renta 4 | Cepsa is putting its Chemical division up for sale for 3.5 billion euros. The Spanish oil company, controlled by Mubadala and The Carlyle Group, has given the green light to the transaction. Citi and Linklaters are advising on the deal. Advent International y Apollo Global Management are amongst the leading candidates for acquiring the division, along with CVC, Platinum Equity, Lone Star and Rhône Capital. The Indian conglomerate…
Banco Santander achieved an attributable profit of €8,124 million in 2021, which compares to an attributable loss of €8,771 billion in 2020, when the bank made a non-cash adjustment to the valuation of goodwill and deferred tax assets (DTAs). The 2021 attributable profit is 25% higher in current euros than in 2019, before covid. Excluding net charges of €530 million for restructuring costs already announced in Q1 2021, underlying profit…
The number of public employees has grown by 6.8% since 2019 and is at record highs, while the private sector is still one million short of its 2007 record. It is true that, taken together, public and private employment, the aggregate number of employed (20.18 million) does exceed the pre-pandemic number by 218,000. But it is public sector employment that has broken historical records and is 6.8% higher than before…
The Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring (FROB) made an offer to the rest of the entities that have shares in the Asset Management Company from Bank Restructuring (Sareb) to take 100% of the company for a symbolic price close to €200, according to Europa Press. Sareb’s shareholder banks must decide whether to sell their stake in the FROB, which they have already fully provisioned.
Renta 4 | The bottlenecks continue in Spain: Red Eléctrica de España (REE) has 339.800 MW of renewables registered in December 2021 compared with 339.700 MW in November. The normal is an additional +2k on a monthly basis. There are too many requests to build wind and photovoltaic farms in Spain. So the government is encouraging the withdrawal of the more problematical ones, those with fewer possibilities of getting through…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The INE published, as expected, the leading indicator of prices for January with two basic data: the year-on-year rate stands at 6% (half a point lower than the previous month) and the monthly rate for January is negative by half a point (prices fell in January) compared with the rise of 1.2 points the previous month. To these two figures we should add a third: core…