Francisco Vidal | Covid, inflation and the new minimum wage hike are just additional problems for SMEs that suffer “a regulatory burden that suffocates them: a commercial establishment opening its doors in 2021 in any Spanish city would be affected by more than 3,000 regulations, from European to municipal”. SMEs make up the heart of Spain’s productive fabric and, in fact, by the end of 2022 there were 2.9 million…
FRANKFURT | By Lidia Conde | Martin Gornig is deputy head of department of Firms and Markets at the prestigious German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin. The Institute conducts a working group that advises the Minister of Economy Sigmar Gabriel with the idea of increasing investments in Germany. Gornig and his team released a report last summer on the possibility of stimulating growth in Europe without changing the Stability Pact. The proposal of DIW is to immediately mobilize the necessary investments “to boost growth in countries in crisis and avoid a new recession in the eurozone.” As France and Italy are demanding, the Institute bets on growth but warns that it should not be at the expense of a debt increase
MADRID | The Corner | A further sign of a recovery in credit: standards on loans within the eurozone have been eased for the first time in the 2Q in seven years, just before the financial crisis bursted, the ECB said in its regular Banking Lending Survey released on Wednesday. Net demand continues to recover for both household and enterprise borrowing. However, as we reported, the open bar announced by Mr Draghi won’t have an impact on loans until 2015 and, meanwhile, credit fall continues to accelerate in some peripheral countries, especially in Spain and Italy.
MADRID | By Julia Pastor | The key for a Spanish sustainable economic recovery are the country’s SMEs. Considering they mean about 90% of the national corporate landscape, the IMF’s last report on Spain provides two main recipes for helping them survive: extending aids for insolvent companies, which would “preserve Spain’s strong payment culture,” and also increasing wages cuts.
SEVILLE | By Ana Fuentes | When it comes to innovation and data management the U.S. is the absolute global leader. But Brussels wants to make up for many years of sitting on its hands: the cake is too yummy to allow Amazon or Google to eat it all. Fiware, a tech platform born from a public-private partnership, aims to finance an open ecosystem for SMEs to develop innovative projects. The budget for the best ideas is 100 million euros, way less than the American big firms are investing. But Spanish entrepreneurs eager to leave the crisis mood behind insist it’s worth to give it a try.
MADRID | By Julia Pastor | Small and medium size companies are the most vulnerable side of the European economy, but also the most powerful weapon to get out of the crisis. Germany will develop a €10 billion credit plan to move peripheral countries SMEs for their own export engine works.
MADRID | The newly created Alternative Fixed Income Market (MARFI, in its Spanish initials) for small and medium size enterprises (SME), that the government wants to have ready, could mobilize around 1 billion euros (1.3 billion dollars) within its first year of existence, says Axesor. The company, specialized in information and credit risk management, adds that the yield could stand somewhere between 6 and 10%.
LONDON | If more than 99% of all European businesses are, in fact, small businesses that shape the true back-bone of the European economy, European governments are clearly missing the chance to generate at least a few millions of new jobs.
LONDON | The sterling on Tuesday was mostly unmoved by the light controversy between some of the top ratings agencies regarding the UK’s triple A qualification on its government debt issuance. That is the highest grade, only to be found over the so-called core European countries. A day had barely passed after Standard & Poor’s said the British AAA was solid, when Moody’s noted that an increasingly weak economy poses…
LONDON | Even before the office for national statistics released its estimates of a UK economy in continued slow-motion deterioration, 84 percent of small and medium size companies’ decision makers said they were concerned about the British economic climate, with 38% being very concerned. A new SME Risk Index from global insurer Zurich published Friday showed that the majority in the sector do not feel confident that the economic situation will improve in…