The European Central Bank has earmarked 123.636 billion euros for net acquisitions of Spanish sovereign debt through its different asset purchase programs since March 2020, when the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic hit Europe, including 89.846 billion in emergency pandemic purchases (PEPP) and another 33.790 billion through the PSPP sovereign debt purchase program, according to the institution’s data.
Iberdrola agrees to acquire majority stake in three DP Energy projects on the east, west and south coasts of the country, which will be eligible for the forthcoming offshore auctions in 2025-2030.The company already operates offshore wind farms in UK and German waters, with new developments in the UK, US and France · Including Ireland, Japan, Sweden and Poland, Iberdrola’s offshore wind pipeline now exceeds 30 GW.
Spain is the country in the euro zone that has spent the least in terms of GDP to deal with the crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. This is according to an article in the European Central Bank (ECB)’s economic bulletin, which was published today. The authors, Stephan Haroutunian, Steffen Osterloh and Kamila Slawinska, estimate Spain’s expenditure on this crisis at 1.3% of GDP, compared with 4% on average in the euro area. This is based on European Commission (EC) calculations.
José Salmerón (Intermoney) | Two years ago, the government agreed with the companies that own nuclear power plants for their phased closing. The first result of this on the Spanish electricity market will be the disappearance of a base power generation in all hours of the year and that in 2020 accounted for 23.6% of electricity demand. In addition, the energy sold at a price below the marginal cost of the market will be radically reduced and the price may rise as never seen before in the daily generation market.
Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, Bankia, Sabadell and Bankinter posted combined losses of €5.55 Bn last year, with their accounts badly affected by the coronavirus, compared to the more than €13.5 Bn achieved in 2019. These negative figures are mainly due to the great losses suffered by Santander, €8.77 Bn, the first of its history, compared to the €6.51 Bn it earned in 2019. Santander’s losses came after increasing provisions for the covid-19 crisis and assuming an impairment of €12.6 Bn in the value of its subsidiaries in the UK, the US and Poland.
Bankinter | The Vodafone and Orange alliance aims to gain size to become an alternative to the big players in the sector, Cellnex and American Tower. The latter recently landed in Europe after the purchase of Telefónica’s towers. The sum of the towers that both groups would contribute to the new “infraco” would be 17,000 sites. It would become the leader in the Spanish market, surpassing Telxius (10,000 towers) and Cellnex (9,000).
Intermoney | ACS, through its US subsidiary Flatiron, will undertake the reconstruction of a runway at Dallas’ second airport, Love Field. The contract budget is 103 Mn€, and the works will comprise, amongst other projects, reshaping the concrete pavement and reforming the taxiway parallel to this runway. Love Field has an estimated annual passenger traffic of 17 million, not counting the pandemic effect, and serves as an operations hub for Southwest Airlines.
Fernando Rodriguez | Spanish companies, banks, autonomous communities and state agencies participated in 40 green, social and sustainable bond issuances in 2020, worth a total of €15,024 million, up 54% since the previous year, according to the 2021 Report of the Spanish Sustainable Finance Observatory (OFISO).
Spain is above the global average in its ability to attract long-stay tourism (i.e., more than a week). This type of tourist accounts for half of the national offer, with long-stay trips considered “more satisfactory” than short-stay trips. This is reflected in the ‘Study on the positioning of Spain as a tourist destination’ recently presented by the Real Instituto Elcano and Turespaña.
Amazon will charge from April all companies that sell their products in Spain, including more than 9,000 Spanish SMEs, the recently launched “Google tax.” This will be a burden for the big technology companies of 3% of their revenues from their digital services in the country. In other words, if a company sells a product for €100 through Amazon, and the reference price is 15%, the platform would apply 3% to that 15%, thus charging 0.45% more, i.e. 15.45%.