Fernando Fernández is a member of the board at Bankia and Red Eléctrica. Apart from the challenges presented by the macroeconomic environment and the technology revolution, he believes that Spain’s banks have to establish a new kind of relationship with their clients and consolidate the sector’s new size.
Repsol has doubled its recurrent synergies from 220 million dollars annually to 400, thanks to its purchase of Canadian oil firm Talisman. But the transaction has also resulted in a 5.5 billion dollars arbitration notice being served against it by the Chinese company Sinopec.
Spain’s bancarisation is making life difficult for its independent financial advisers (Empresas de Asesoramiento Financiero Independiente or EAFIs), while excessive regulation is also clipping their wings.
Bankia’s current management team has decided to give back to minority shareholders the money they invested in the banks’s shares in July 2011 with 1% annual interest. The proposal is a sensible one because it benefits shareholders and tax payers, as well as Bankia’s image and balance sheet.
Luis Carlos Croissier is a member of the board of Repsol, Spain’s biggest oil company. He recalls that proven global oil reserves are currently double the level they were in 1980. Croissier was also chairman of the CNMV, the stock exchange regulatory body, and responsible for the Spanish bourse’s “Big Bang”, at the end of 80’s. Before that time, he was Industry Minister in Spain’s Socialist party.
Bankia, created from the merger of seven savings banks lead by Cajamadrid and Bancaja, and its July 2011 stock market listing, have become a major headache for many people: the bank’s shareholders, the current management team, the auditor, the Bank of Spain and the stock exchange regulatory body CNMV.
The global economy in general, and the Spanish economy in particular, are experiencing turbulent times. China, the emerging markets, raw materials, the weak recovery, inflation or exchange rates are entangled with the domestic problems of each individual country. In Spain, these are focused on a political map with a lot of question marks and a worrying level of private debt, which Abengoa’s crisis has accentuated.
The Corner | July 27, 2015 | Spain’s bailed-out lender Bankia saw its first-half profit rose 11.5 percent from a year ago, as it reported on Monday. Net profit rose 10.3 per cent to €311m, versus a consensus of analysts’ expectations of €277.8m. Charges against bad debts fell and offset weaker revenue from lending.
MADRID | June 22, 2015 | By Fernando Barciela | Member of the board at Spanish stock market operator BME since 2014, Carlos Fernández is the current ombudsman of the Madrid Stock Exchange. In the first part of this interview he spoke to The Corner about conflicts of interest in the auditing world –”Somehow regulators are the ones who should be regulated,”– and the excess of complex information that investors face.
MADRID | April 8, 2015 | By Fernando G. Urbaneja | Earlier this year, Santander announced a capital increase of €7 billion through an accelerated book building offer to institutional investors at a 12% discount on the traded share price, which was between €6-€7. Within hours, the new shares were sold and existing shareholders were left as bystanders once they had authorised the board to waive their preferential subscription rights.