What does Latin America’s bumper election year hold in store for the continent? It is unclear, but as the 2018 regional report on Latin America from Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index (BTI) stresses, “structural transformation takes time and patience, which many citizens no longer have to spare.”
“Separating political noise from market signals in an era of Tweetstorms, unconventional leadership, and low public trust has possibly never been more challenging”, says Tina M. Fordham, chief global political analyst at Citi. Will geopolitical risks grow in their potential to impact markets following the withdrawal of Quantitative Easing (QE)?
The relationship between geopolitics and economic variables is a recurrent theme in the media. And not just in the media: economists are increasingly more aware of the importance of analysing geopolitical risks to complete an accurate exercise on the economic outlook.
Banco Santander announced earlier this week that it posted profits of 6.619 billion euros in 2017, up 7% from a year earlier: BBVA published its results yesterday, with profits rising 1.3% year-on-year to 3.519 billion. Ten years on, have the two banks recovered from the global financial crisis?
The year that has just started looks like one of those textbooks opportunities which appear by magic at the beginning of a new year. The banking sector has risen strongly, only beaten by Metals&Mining and Automotive. For Alphavalue’s experts this ranking suggests we are not facing a shift in fundamentals. All the protagonists in the banking sector are clearly confirming that it’s not just a case of rediscovering a handful of quality names.
Spanish companies without any subsidies or bailouts have turned themselves around and transformed the former autarchy into a country decidely open to the overseas market.
Spain ended 2017 with 611.146 more people in a job, a notable improvement on the results of the previous four years. The number of people signed on with the Social Security rose 3.4% to 18.460.201 from a year earlier.
Greece enters a new year that could prove to be a watershed in its long and meandering traipse through three successive bailouts and faltering efforts to overcome the chronic weaknesses that contributed to one of the most damaging economic crises the developed world has seen.
The stability in Spain’s growth in the fourth quarter compared with the third is the result of two forces pulling in opposite directions: the strength of the export markets has offset the adverse effect of increased political uncertainty in Catalonia.
Tasnim Nazeer | Cryptocurrency, or blockchain, is rapidly evolving around the world to cater for virtual peer-to-peer transactions using digital currency. Virtual money has made the daily business of life much easier for many of us, but can it help alleviate poverty in the developing world?