Spain’s second biggest bank BBVA said it posted a 53.8% drop in net profit to 709 million euros in the first quarter to March from a year earlier. The bank explained that quarterly results were hampered by a number of factors, including the impact of exchange rates, lower results from NTI and the lack of corporate operations.
The investor (or fund manager) who wants to have an idea of how the Spanish stock market is doing by looking at the sector index could be stepping into a trap. There can be a vast difference in profitability between one stock or another in the same sector.
Lately the markets are moving more to the beat of the big central banks’ drums than to the trend in corporate earnings. That’s the only way to explain how the Ibex is saving face, given that third quarter results presented so far (by 20 out of the 35 companies in the index) are 16% lower than expected, according to Bloomberg.
MADRID | Telefónica will attempt for the second time since last May the sale of its call centre services Atento. According to El Confidencial, the company has hired Morgan Stanley and HSBC to organise the operation, which last year failed to get enough demand in a partial IPO. The Spanish multinational now aims to do this through an investor auction open to corporations in the industrial sector and private equity firms. Financial…