Archives for July 2010
July 1st, 2010
Spain's Telefonica raised its bid for Brazil's leading cell phone company Vivo to euro7.15 billion ($8.72 billion) from euro6.5 billion just before a shareholder vote Wednesday on the unsolicited offer. Telefonica SA and Portugal Telecom SGPS SA each own 50 percent of Brasilcel, a holding company which in turn owns 60 ...
Continue reading Telefonica Ups Bid for Brazil’s Vivo
July 2nd, 2010
Apparently now is a great time to buy Spanish property as the banks once again play games with their balance sheets. When the financial crises struck the Spanish property market, the banks avoided making massive write-downs by converting the loan assets into hard assets - the homes the loans were ...
Continue reading Pick up a Bargain Property as Banks Offload Assets
July 5th, 2010
A crucial indication of whether European banks can be taken off "life support" from central banks will come this morning as the European Central Bank (ECB) offers refinancing for a €442bn loan that has kept the system afloat for the past year. Analysts reckon that if the ECB admits that banks ...
Continue reading European Banks Await News on Refinancing Package
July 6th, 2010
The Spanish property market correction will run into 2012, with prices down by 30% in total, say ratings agents Fitch. Spanish property prices haven’t fallen enough, according to a new report from Fitch Ratings. “Fitch believes that Spanish house prices remain over-valued relative to income thresholds and need to decline further to ...
Continue reading House Prices Forecast to Fall Further
July 6th, 2010
There seems to be renewed international interest in what's happening to the Spanish property market. Last week I spoke with a journalist from the Norwegian Financial Times who was trying to make sense of the official house price data and marry that with some market sentiment. Meanwhile, people are clearly ...
Continue reading International Interest in Spanish House Prices
July 7th, 2010
Europe’s leaders have a simple explanation for the current financial crisis on their continent: greedy Wall Street hedge funds caused it. Rapacious investors made wild bets on Greek debt, the argument goes, which drove up borrowing costs and made the crisis seem even worse than it was. That bad behavior ...
Continue reading European Banks Worse Than Wall Street
July 8th, 2010
Asking prices are still between 10% and 20% too high, reveals a new survey of house-hunters carried out in March by the Foundation of Savings Banks (FUNCAS). 84% of Spaniards think that vendors are still asking too much, and more than half think prices will fall around 10.5% this year. Compared to ...
Continue reading Survey Shows House Prices Still Too High
July 9th, 2010
International investors flocked to buy Spanish bonds on Tuesday amid rising hopes that Madrid had averted a financial crisis and would not have to use emergency bail-out loans. The Spanish raised €6bn ($7.6bn) in 10-year bonds, with orders rising to €14bn in the space of just a few hours, as many ...
Continue reading Spanish Bonds Attract Global Investors
July 12th, 2010
With markets unconvinced that stress tests on 100 European banks will be stringent enough, policymakers are carefully balancing secrecy and disclosure. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in particular -- markets are most concerned about the Spanish and German banking systems -- must carefully manage ...
Continue reading EU Leaders Under Pressure Over Bank Stress Tests
July 13th, 2010
Finally, a political initiative from Spain’s regional political parties that makes some sense. The Coalición Canaria (CC) party from The Canaries has drummed up enough support from opposition parties such as CiU, a regional party from Catalonia, to debate new proposals to water down some aspects of the Ley de ...
Continue reading Spanish Parliament to Debate Infamous Coastal Law
