Finanzas

La empresa ha confirmado que el servicio se ha interrumpido y que está investigando las causas

La presidenta del Santander alerta del riesgo de que empeore la economía en una charla en la Universidad de Deusto

Esta cifra incluye lo obtenido por la venta de las antiguas cajas y los ingresos por la privatización del 14,5% de Bankia

La empresa eleva de 10 a 12 el número de consejeros, de los que siete son independientes

AT THE annual World Series of Poker, which begins this week in Las Vegas, the main event is the no-limit Texas hold ’em tournament. In the course of two weeks of gruelling knock-out play, several thousand players are whittled down to just two, playing “heads-up” for one of the WSOP’s coveted bracelets.

In last year’s final hand, both players had pushed all their chips in, with five shared cards yet to be dealt. Scott Blumstein, who held Ace-Deuce, was a big underdog against Daniel Ott, who held Ace-Eight. With one card to come, Mr Blumstein’s hand had not improved. His chances had narrowed to 7%. Of the remaining 44 cards, only one of the other three deuces could give him victory.

The cards—and thus the odds of winning or losing—were known to both players, because they had already committed all their chips. Poker is not usually like this. Winning depends not only on your cards but on the unseen cards held by other players, on your ability to deceive them by…Continue reading

IT IS a classic startup story, but with a twist. Three 20-somethings launched a firm out of a dorm room at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2016, with the goal of using algorithms to predict the reply to an e-mail. In May they were fundraising for their startup, EasyEmail, when Google held its annual conference for software developers and announced a tool similar to EasyEmail’s. Filip Twarowski, its boss, sees Google’s incursion as “incredible confirmation” they are working on something worthwhile. But he also admits that it came as “a little bit of a shock”. The giant has scared off at least one prospective backer of EasyEmail, because venture capitalists try to dodge spaces where the tech giants might step.

The behemoths’ annual conferences, held to announce new tools, features, and acquisitions, always “send shock waves of fear through entrepreneurs”, says Mike Driscoll, a partner at Data Collective, an investment firm. “Venture capitalists attend to see…Continue reading

DIVINING meaning in the Trump administration’s trade announcements is a thankless task. No sooner does a policy seem settled than it is thrown up in the air once more. On May 23rd, days before a scheduled meeting with the European Union and Japan on a joint trade strategy and in the middle of talks to revamp the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it began an investigation into whether car imports are a threat to America’s national security. On May 29th, days after tariffs on imports from China were supposedly put on hold, official word came that tariffs on $50bn of Chinese imports would be imposed “shortly” after June 15th. Barring a last-minute change of heart—which would not be the first—as The Economist went to press the administration was expected to announce tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from the EU from June 1st. Whether America’s partners in NAFTA, Canada and Mexico, would also be hit was unclear.

The chaos is partly the…Continue reading

A YEAR ago, investors in 21st Century Fox, Rupert Murdoch’s entertainment empire, could have been forgiven a bout of the blues. Shares were down by 30% from their peak in December 2014. Viewership of most of the company’s American networks was in decline, and millions had dropped expensive pay-TV packages, including its own, in favour of cheaper web-delivered video.

On May 25th Fox’s shares reached a new all-time high, rising above $39 a share. The business has not turned around, but Fox’s value has, as a prize for other media titans seeking global scale. Comcast, a cable giant, is preparing to top Disney’s $52bn all-stock offer for much of Fox (plus almost $15bn in debt) with an all-cash offer of at least $60bn. Disney is reportedly readying cash to sweeten its offer, which Fox’s board had approved in December. The final sale price could exceed $70bn. The winner will take on Netflix and Amazon in the competition for customers globally. The loser will be at risk of falling…Continue reading

TIPPED, not stirred, is how hip young things in China now take their tea. To be exact, at a 45-degree tilt. So advise the tea-ristas of HEYTEA, a budding, pricey tea chain, the better to blend the bitter tang of freshly brewed leaves with a salty cream-cheese “cap”. Naigai cha, or cheese-tea, has taken China’s rich eastern cities by storm. For months after HEYTEA shops appeared in Shanghai in February 2017, security guards had to manage queues with waiting times of up to three hours. Impatient customers hired queuers from personal-services apps to stand in line for them. Cups were limited to two purchases a person to ward off scalpers (the limit is still in place in Beijing).

To many in the beverage industry this smacked of “thirst marketing”, purposely keeping supply scarce. HEYTEA denies this, as well as accusations of padding out its own queues. Though everything from fancy eateries to convenience stores is on China’s main food-delivery apps, HEYTEA stayed off…Continue reading

JUST a few hundred metres from Budapest airport’s runways, the wails of scorched airline passengers echo around an industrial estate. But no real people are being harmed. Here Wizz Air, a rapidly growing Hungarian carrier, trains cabin crew and pilots in evacuating its planes safely. Last year the airline recruited 1,000 new staff, twice as many as the year before. In February construction work started on a bigger training centre to teach an extra 1,400 cabin crew it will need next year.

If anyone will be burned by this expansion it will be Europe’s cheapest airline, Ryanair. Over the past two decades its chief executive, Michael O’Leary, turned the Irish minnow into Europe’s biggest carrier by copying the low-cost model of Southwest, an American budget airline. It has long had no-frills rivals such as easyJet and Norwegian. But these two have never been able to match Ryanair’s low cost base. Yet after Wizz’s full-year results on May 24th, in which it reported record profits,…Continue reading