Eulogio López | Rafael Villaseca, CEO of Gas Natural Fenosa is an industrial engineer and it shows. He has worked for a wide variety of companies: Panrico, Inisel, Nueva Montaña Quijano…And lately he has become a harsh critic not of the renewable energy firms themselves, but of the subsidies they receive.
José A. Santos (Patrivalor) | The value of the 60 Spanish companies listed on the stock market stood at 536.499 billion euros at end-July 2016, down 9.0% from end-2015, Patrivalor says.
A recent European Commission report on innovation indicators highlights that Spain is the third country, along with Lithuania, which has fallen behind the most in matters of innovation – after Romania and Hungary. Since the start of the crisis in 2008, Spain has lost an average of 0.8% annually in R&D output.
The EU Comission has decided not to fine Spain and Portugal for its deviation in the public deficit in 2015. Both countries, which have been traditional fiscal sinners since the crisis began, did not take effective actions last year. Although symbolic, Brussels could have imposed fines of up to 0.2 percent of GDP on Madrid and Lisbon, around 2.1 billion euros in the case of Spain.
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.
Investors’ fears and their hunt for safe haven assets are having an unsuspected impact on European public debt yields: nearly two thirds of these securities are in negative territory; the German bund is beating a new record low on a daily basis and Spanish debt is approaching the minimum levels recorded in April 2015.
The PSOE party, with 137 years of history, has already had four leaders so far this century, none of whom have consolidated their position. That said, Rodriguez Zapatero succeeded in heading up two relative majority governments and two minority administrations between 2004 and 2012.
Despite the fact that over the last 10 years there has been a lot of feverish activity promoting technological entrepreneurship and help for startups in Spain, so far we still do not have one company which is worth more than 1 billion dollars, what is referred to as a Unicorn.
Ten million Spaniards watched the most important debate between candidates from the four parties which could form a Government in Spain on Monday night. And yet the participants did not clarify the most important point: Will there be a Government after the elections on June 26?