NEW YORK | Amid a fresh gust of optimism as Spain raised more money than anticipated in a pair of short-term bond auctions and after a solid round of U.S. corporate earnings reports, stock markets rallied on Tuesday. However, shares of Spanish oil group Repsol tumbled more than 6% in the wake of the Argentine government’s move to nationalize Repsol’s part of YPF without saying anything about compensation. Repsol’s share…
By Alberto Valverde (http://www.capitalmadrid.com) in Madrid | In 1999, Alfonso Cortina, Repsol’s president sworn in by the grace of the then president José María Aznar, accorded the acquisition as a majority shareholder of Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) at a price that president of Argentina Carlos Menem took no time in accepting. The late Nestor Kirchner, married to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is now Argentina’s president since succeeding her husband in…
By Tania Suárez, in Madrid | President Cristina Kirchner may have got her way as she finally decided to expropriate Repsol’s YPF unit. The Argentine government confirmed the nationalisation of a 51% stake in YPF, because by decree it considered the oil firm’s activities of ‘public interest’. Tuesday morning, the president of Repsol Antonio Brufau declared that this decision is “illegitimate and unjustifiable, an act preceded by a campaign of harassment, of…
MADRID | YPF, the subsidiary in Argentina of Spanish oil company Repsol, will carry out last year’s dividend payment in shares in response to pressure from Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s government. The republic’s authorities have vehemently expressed their desire for the corporation to increase investment activity in the country instead of distributing the cash to stockholders. The board approved this week the transfer of 1.057 billion pesos from reserve for…