NEW YORK | In allegedly the most expensive shopping street in the world, Zara inaugurated Wednesday its new flagship store. Fashionistas, entrepreneurs and journalists attended the Spanish clothing retailer debut, which is their US largest bet so far. The company bought the real estate property for $324 million and claims the store to be a totally new concept. Would it be worth the money? Hard to say, but the visit of…
MADRID | The general strike announced for March 29 will be the ninth in Spain’s modern democracy, the 12th if we start counting from the day dictator Francisco Franco died. The general strike is part of unions’ mythology, meaning a show of extra impact and a demonstration of power. There were revolutionary general strikes in 1917 and 1934, even in July 1936 after the coup d’état that was later called Alzamiento,…
Long term refinancing operation 2 or liquidity injections into Spanish credit entities via the European Central Bank rose in February to €152.432 billion from €133.177 in January. But, contrary to what most European banks seem to be doing, that is, parking capital in the central bank’s deposit facility, Spain’s banks prefer to take advantage of the rate gap and let slip in profits by purchasing sovereign debt. Bond holdings have…
By Tania Suárez, in Madrid | Even though the Spanish risk premium on Wednesday morning dropped to 328 basis points, financial analysts in Madrid are split up about its evolution. 50% of the analysts consulted by Consenso consider reasonable a fall below 300bp before the end of 2012. Most of them clarify that the risk premium will decrease, but depending on economic developments in the international economic context. Also, some of…
MADRID | Former colleagues at the Bank of England will read with some sense of shock what William White told the Spanish financial newspaper Expansión during an interview with one of its editors, Miquel Roig. Or perhaps not. After all, as Roig points out in today’s edition, “‘Central bankers are a strong brotherhood of mutual admiration,’ former ECB president Jean Claude Trichet used to say. William White was the one who dared…
By Fernando Rodríguez, in Madrid | Maite Ballester is president at the Spanish Venture Capital Association ASCRI, which is a non profit entity born in 1986 to develop and promote temporal investment in private companies. She also is managing director at 3i. In what way will Spain’s venture capital sector be affected by the financial system reform and more stringent rules on bank capital reserves? In the short term, these two factors will mean less…
Catalan economist Vicenç Navarro delivers view points whose argument sounds completely contrarian at this stage. While austerity may be debated over –at which degree should it be imposed and how quickly, so further spikes in sovereign debt can be avoided?–, the consensus bears little doubt: public investment must be dramatically lowered. It is the right medicine. But confronted with an increasingly stalled productivity and a disquieting unemployment rate, those of…
A shocking fact, from the revolving door here at thecorner.eu via Spain’s business paper Expansión, and a worth-noting point for readers tired of stereotypes: former Financial Times correspondent in Madrid Tom Burns has news for the pink’un-obsessed continental Europeans. What’s the dead-tree media brand of preference in the City of London? Not that one. Burns says City types love the finance pages of The Daily Telegraph, instead. “[In Europe] those in…
By Luis Arroyo, in Madrid | While some Spanish labour union leaders attend press conferences dressed up in expensive Rolex watches, employment numbers increase somewhere else: in the US, as this graphics show and economist Tim Duy explains in his post. Hiring activity in the US raises 245,000 new jobs since last December. It always is inconvenient and very imperfect to compare different national labour markets and I know better. Yet,…
By Juan Pedro Marín Arrese, in Madrid | The way the data on the Spanish deficit snowballed from 6% in mid-December to 8% a few weeks later and to 8.51% now, has led many to raise their eyebrows in utter disbelief. Even allowing for some benign neglect shown by the out coming government, such a huge deviation adds little credit to budgetary figures outside central administration boundaries. It not only proves…