Business News & Financial News

Spanish economy 16th September 2026

Housing crisis? INE asserts that “building construction” is falling by 40% year-on-year

According to the National Statistics Institute (INE), construction output, adjusting for seasonal and calendar effects, fell in Spain by 0.3% in July compared to June. In June, this variable had dropped by 0.7%. Of the three divisions analyzed, only building construction posted a negative monthly rate (-1.4%). On the other hand, specialized construction activities recorded the largest increase in July (+2.0%). In year-on-year terms, construction output—adjusted for seasonal and calendar…

European economy 11th September 2026

ECB raises rates by 0.25 to 2.5%: Prices rise, and so does the cost of money

Julian Marx (Flossbach von Storch) | Strength lies in calm, and this applies to monetary policy as well. As a rule, the European Central Bank (ECB) avoids generating unnecessary suspense before potential changes in interest rates. This occasion was no different: Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel virtually previewed the rate decision when speaking to the French newspaper Le Monde in early September: “Inflation is currently very far from our medium-term target…

In the World 14th September 2026

The real BRICS summit happened in a side room with Modi and Xi

Alicia Gª Herrero (Natixis) | After a sleepless night, the New Delhi Declaration was adopted unanimously at the eighteenth BRICS summit on September 12, after managing to find language that Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could all live with. That was the ceremony but the real action happened on the margins, where Narendra Modi received Xi Jinping for the first Chinese visit to India since 2019, and the…

rosa garcia consejera caixabank acerinox ence

“Many companies complicate CSRD implementation more than necessary”

Rosa Mª García Piñeiro, board member at Caixabank, Acerinox, and Ence—serving as chair of the sustainability committee for the latter two and as a committee member at Caixabank—explains that “the directive does not set the materiality threshold. The company decides it based on its own criteria. There is nothing in the legislation that prescribes what is material and what is not. The auditor-verifier may have one opinion, the company may…

“We are one of Europe’s leading R&D investors: €1.45 billion last year”

“We need to approach negotiations with the U.S. on terms that are completely different from those currently being proposed”

Says Antonio Bonet, president of the Club of Spanish Exporters and Investors. He points out that “Europe has a single tariff applied by all member states, but the U.S. applies a tariff to each country, meaning it can decide that the tariff applied to Spanish black olives is higher than that for Italian olives, as it did at one point. So there is a part of the negotiation between Europe…

…in the last week