MADRID | Nobody seems to pay much attention to bad news these days. The stock market shows a bullish bias, recovering from the lows it plunged into driven by fears of utter collapse. Yet, recession has intensified its slide, the second quarter showing a 0,4% GDP decrease. With no prospects of redressing the downturn till the middle of next year, at the best, future outlook doesn’t provide much room for optimism….
By Íñigo Villegui | Capitalmadrid.com | Something is happening in the euro zone. The possibility of a purchase of bonds by the European Central Bank or by a bailout fund, which would favour the tightening of risk premiums and facilitate access to markets for public and private sectors, is getting closer. Or, at least, that’s what investors assume. They have gone from considering that Spanish finances were doomed to dismiss…
The Spanish tether already seems overstretched. On Monday, the national institute for statistics published fresh data confirming a forecast released days before by the country’s central bank, which warned of a contracting GDP: at -0.4 percent, records for the second quarter of the year were indeed 0.1 percent worse than for the first three months. Private consumption and investment have fallen, year on year rates of industrial prices have risen…
MADRID | The Spanish Economy minister Mr Luis de Guindos boldly stated to feel much the same as in the midst of the sell-out tempest, shortly after Draghi’s soothing promise. No one took seriously his assessment and yet he might be right. After all, Draghi is at best offering extra time to put the house in order. His pledge to save the euro has being interpreted as a clear signal to…
By Luis A. Torralba, in Valencia | Electricity producers in Spain have managed to weather the crisis under the umbrella of extraordinary income from non-recurring profits. But the markets, in spite of historically high dividends, are letting the uncertainty over the pending energy sector reform drag stocks down with a vengeance. Some declarations bring little help. The minister for Energy and Tourism José Manuel Soria recently gave away a warning:…
MADRID | The importance of being a central banker was starkly shown by the dramatic change in market mood following Thursday’s soothing statement by Draghi. His open commitment to support the euro skyrocketed share quotes and drove sharply lower Spanish and Italian risk premium. All of the sudden doomsday scaremongering vanished, an overwhelming wave of up-beat optimism taking its place. Draghi’s closing remarks that the ECB would keep to its mandate…
Economist Ricardo R. Reis expects “better policymaking from the European authorities now.” Originally from Portugal, Reis teaches at Columbia University, he is a former graduate from the London School of Economics and Harvard Ph.D and has worked extensively on inflation dynamics and monetary and fiscal policy, including evaluation of fiscal stimulus programs. He gives his take on the current economic turmoil for our readers in the first of a summer…
MADRID | Analysts at BNP Paribas’s broker Cortal Consors in Spain said in an investor note that their scenarios for the situation of the unemployment levels would not register any improvement until the second half of next year. Occupation is still under a heavy destruction trend in Spain, with a -4.1 percent during the second quarter of 2012. Unfortunately, data released today by the Spanish institute of statistics backed pessimistic…
BARCELONA | CaixaBank reported Friday a poor attributed January to March net income of €166 million as a result of provisions enforced by the Spanish government, set to clean up the balance sheets of the country’s banking sector. For the Catalan entity, the figure means an 80.1-percent cut down comparing to the first quarter of 2011 and bears the scars of large write-downs of €3.735 billion. CaixaB ank said that, as…
MADRID | There will be no dividend from Telefónica over the next fifteen months. The decision is not surprising but consistent with the situation. Yet, it has a devastating effect on many investors the company had promised to pay 77 cents in December as a second dividend in the year, and again in May. The company will now retain its full profits within the 2012 balance sheet (€4-€5 billion) to reduce…