The set up of the Banking Union in the European Union has not only triggered the habitual complaints from the UK and Sweden. Even core euro zone looks divided. And it all adds pressure for Spain to require a national bailout.
MADRID | Data from the latest bond issuances by Spanish corporates show non-resident investors have returned to this market with growing appetite. The new-found confidence comes supported by the European Central Bank monetary policies.
LONDON | Something had to be done to support the euro. But some in the City still see the European Central Bank excessively scared of inflation. Past cash injections, though, have depreciated the common currency very little.
Crystal-clear answers for the foggiest question: why is the euro zone in such dire state? Banco Santander’s board member Guillermo de la Dehesa speaks of a self-inflicted crisis, the resignation cycle at the Bundesbank and how to reform the European Central Bank.
Although the latest intervention from the European Central Bank may have opened a window of respite for Spain’s president Mariano Rajoy, economist Juan Pedro Marín Arrese alerts he should be wary of delaying decisions.
Where there is the European Central Bank’s full capacity of purchasing short-term State debt, there is hope. Even the primary market has opened, although by understandably timid measures, for southern euro zone debt issuers at a sub-sovereign level like State agencies and autonomous regions. The financial City of Madrid expects this window of opportunity to expand and demand of government bonds to improve as it is already happening to banks…
Morning! There’s a lot of event risk this week. Among things investors will be looking up are the Federal Reserve’s meeting and German Constitutional Court ruling about the legality of the European Stability Mechanism. It’s not that the court will rule against the ESM, but it could attach conditions that would make it react slowlier. “Investors are likely to keep focusing on the ECB’s plan as a roadmap, which it’s…
Community jargon shows how mere wishful thinking is turned into what seems a rock-solid reality-to-be. The EU is full of expectations that never materialize. Yet, this shortcoming does not deter officials from bombastically naming policies or mechanisms as if there was no chance they might derail. Just take the rescue label so often applied to Greece. One takes for granted that once you are rescued from peril you can consider…
José Luis Marco, CAPITAL MADRID | Although Spanish banks have little direct exposure in Greece, the country over which hangs the euro zone exclusion threat, something different happens with several European banks: they have a direct interest in the Hellenic country both with their branches in the country and with the assumption of Greek sovereign debt. Some of the biggest banks are partners or shareholders of several Spanish banks. Banco…
Spanish SMEs pay the higher interest rates of the past four years at the time of borrowing, while the cost for German companies is at historic lows, according to financing costs for families and businesses in the euro zone published on Monday by the ECB. This trend puts markedly divergent increasingly southern European companies at a competitive disadvantage to rivals in Northern Europe. “We all know that financing costs are…