All posts by Victor Jimenez

MADRID | Banco Santander on Monday announced that the banking group in Spain, including Banesto, will require €2.7 billion before taxes to comply with the new legislation passed last May 11 on real estate asset provisions. These charges are in addition to the reserves already made compulsory by a decree-law in February, of which €2.3 billion [...]

LONDON | Were the tide changing within the shaken frontiers of the European Monetary Union, austerity-driven core euro nations could do worse than open the European Investment Bank’s window to let some fresh capital aid in. Barclays analysts said Friday in a note to investors that using the EIB to complement budget constrictions would be [...]

The aggregate of the main European banking institutions has lost almost half a billion of euros in market value, from €670 billion to just over €200 billion during the last five years. The average drop has been 65 percent. But Italian and French banks have led the fall with a 70 percent of their stock [...]

All the way from Afi analysts in Madrid, we got this simple and colourful chart comparing purchasing managers index figures of different countries in September 2011 (because it was the month when global manufacturing activity recorded the latest lowest levels) and March-April 2012, with a third column that brings up the variation between those dates. [...]

LONDON/MADRID | On May 15, Greece faces a €436-million bill in maturities of State bonds issued under international law. Will the Hellenic Treasury pay investors back? In Madrid, Afi analysts told clients the probabilities of defaulting in some of the bonds that did not participate in the last debt restructuring deal are extremely high. They mentioned [...]

Virgin Mobile Latin America VMLA, a portfolio company of ePlanet Capital, closed April with a round of extra finance of $26.5 million in new equity financing, the company announced in its latest public communication. The funds will go toward developing regional businesses and launch services in Chile. Investors include the Virgin Group and ePlanet Capital, CANEPA, Souter Investments and Hermes [...]

LONDON | The National Institute of Economic and Social Research in London said the European Monetary Union will take a long year and a mild recession before finding its way towards growth. The UK’s economy would evolve along the same path. In a prospect note, analysts at the NIESR indicated that their baseline forecast is for global [...]