According to Jordi Gual, director of Telefónica Brazil and chairman of VidaCaixa, the biggest problem of the single European market is precisely that, “we still don’t have a single market. Neither in banking, nor in energy, nor in telecommunications… Nor have we created a single risk-free European asset, which is fundamental in the financial markets”. In the next issue of Consejeros, the former chairman of Caixabank gives his forecast for...

Telecom networks have high energy consumption. Companies in the sector are now taking steps to improve their energy efficiency through the use of renewable energy, network sharing, etc. According to Morgan Stanley, the use of green bonds to finance projects (5G, fibre optic) will increase. About €3.5 billion of the current debt could be refinanced annually via this kind of bond.

Morgan Stanley | We reviewed the European telecoms sector where we thought, confronted by an environment where there have been numerous profit warnings in the global technology sector (Ericsson, Hexagone, Netflix, Software AG, Tieto), together with our global recommendation downgrade from RV to UW, that the telecoms are well positioned to offer a better performance than seen in Q418.

Cellnex's stock market listing in 2015 was the first in a series of moves (Inwit's share offer, the sale of Telefonica's stake in Telxius, etc) towards the creation of a listed telecommunications' infrastructure sector, focusing on the mobile broad band segment.

MADRID | The Corner | Orange is set to buy Spanish competitor Jazztel in a €3.33bn ($4.3bn) deal. The merger will see Jazztel receive €13 a share, a boost of 22% on the company´s closing share price on Friday. The French giant says it is not seeking further acquisitions in other countries. The truth is we haven´t seen this M&A frenzy since 2006-2008: deals worth $630bn + 63% vs. 2013 and - 29% below $897bn in 2006.

MADRID | By Fernando Barciela| In the EU of 28 each telecom market is different.
 That is one of the reasons explaining why it is very difficult for Europe to reach a reduced market of just three operators like the US, as Luis Solana said. Another challenge for the sector in the region is to push technologies up to avoid it becomes a simple ‘utility’. At the moment, Telefonica tries to help the industry gathering new ideas for startups in all the company’s territory- Spain, UK, Germany, LatAm and so on- via its entrepreunership device Wayra.