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Markets 4th May 2012

Barclays Capital: Spain’s debt dynamics sustainable

MADRID | Barclays Capital made a realistic yet not Armageddon-like exercise in which the Spanish banking sector would need a recapitalisation equivalent to 6 percent of the country’s GDP, plus an additional 5.4 percent of GDP as an extra-safety calculation. Its analysts threw in 0.9 percent of GDP in Greek liabilities, and 3.5 percent of GDP in administrations’ accumulated debt payments. The scenario considered included yields on 10-year bonds of…

Markets 3rd May 2012

Euro zone PMI in April at mid-2009 levels

The Purchasing Managers Index provides one of the most reliable hints about a country’s GDP behaviour, so isn’t difficult to agree with all observers that April’s relapse in PMI figures in the euro zone spell loss of momentum in industrial activity. The data are at the lowest level since mid-2009. With no signs of acceleration of the indicators of activity and with early sentiment indexes’ falling in the second quarter of 2012, the risk of the…

Markets 2nd May 2012

The Ibex’s diem horribilis

The major European markets closed Wednesday in the negative, with losses of -0.93% for London and -0.78% for Frankfurt, while Paris scored +0.42%. But Milan with -2.6% and Madrid suffered the biggest falls. The Spanish stock market dropped 2.55% today and recorded a new annual minimum (6831.9 points) hurt by the slowdown in industrial activity in Europe, weak job creation in the United States and the decline of the banking sector. The hit could have been worse as during the session the index came to be over -3%, that is approaching…

Markets 2nd May 2012

European flows to bonds not a confidence vote in the euro, Morningstar warns

LONDON | Is that a global bond boom we have before our eyes? Morningstar research said the latest European asset flow data showed that long-term funds enjoyed a strong first quarter this year, receiving more than €50 billion of new investor assets. Of this, more than 70 per cent went to fixed-income funds, while equity funds, by contrast, had net redemptions for March and only slightly positive inflows between January and March….

Markets 2nd May 2012

Most Europe investment managers optimistic on the long term

LONDON | The majority of asset managers working on the European markets agree that there are opportunities to invest despite fragility of the single currency. The UK’s Association of Investment Companies (AIC) published this week the results after having polled Europe managers to gauge opinion on what may be in store for the region. Whilst managers expect pain in the short-term, and do not see miracles happening overnight, over the longer-term they…

Markets 1st May 2012

Skandia’s Gillham: “Downgrading devil is in the Spanish bank funding detail”

LONDON | The worsening of Spain’s debt risk grades will have grave implications, whether market participants believe the situation in which the country’s public finances are is reversible or not. Portfolio manager at Skandia Investment Group’s fixed income funds and researcher, Anthony Gillham distrusts talk of priced-in negative events. Although last Friday’s announcement by Standard and Poors that Spain is to be downgraded by two notches from A to BBB+ was…

Spanish economy 1st May 2012

Almost all Spaniards are now poorer

By Carlos Díaz Guell, in Madrid | In Spain, households’ financial assets fell by 3.5% in 2011 due to a downturn in acquisition activity and especially market declines recorded in the third quarter of last year after the deterioration of the sovereign crisis. This is compounded by the collapse of housing prices, which caused housing sector wealth to fall by 6.6% dragging total net wealth down 51 percentage points of GDP. In 2011 it also was reported a change in the composition of household savings with a fall not seen…

Spanish economy 30th April 2012

Spain contracts but recovers faster than any other euro country

MADRID | After the national office for statistics in Spain confirmed everyone’s suspicions about the country returning to recession, with a -0.3% economic contraction versus expectations of -0.4% , a note from BBVA research team on Spain’s strengths could come handy as a reminder that the #spanic would be still avoidable and this Espan-hole could be safely closed. BBVA analysts explained in its monthly report aptly headlined ‘Leaving stereotypes behind‘ that…

Markets 30th April 2012

Lack of appetite for risk

By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | Please, bear with me. First, I took a graph from the Noah Smith’s blog, in which everyone can see that venture capital has almost passed away since the 2000 crisis. The chart shows the value of equity shares, and each line is a selection made under a different approach. The 1990’s were the golden age of risk, people loved risk and the VC funding…

World economy 30th April 2012

Monday’s euro zone graphs: business investment and profit share slightly down

Bad news for those in Brussels and Berlin who expected higher competitiveness through austerity budgets. Eurostat said today that in the fourth quarter of 2011, compared with the previous three months, business investment rates decreased in both the euro area and the European Union. Furthermore, official data also showed that in the euro area, the business profit share declined as wage costs increased while value added fell slightly. From October…