Finanzas

Schäuble pregunta a Guindos sobre la reacción de la opinión pública española

La agencia de calificación cree que existen incertidumbres sobre nuevas contingencias contables porque los ajustes anunciados esta semana son solo una estimación inicial

Las acciones del fabricante de componentes para coches han llegado a caer un 4,4% desde el precio inicial de 5,6 euros

Los ingresos por primas alcanzaron en el último año los 4.751 millones de euros, un 9,6% más

Ana Botín, presidenta de la entidad: “El año fue muy volátil en los mercados y no fuimos inmunes”

La compañía sale este viernes a Bolsa con una valoración inicial de 3.222 millones de euros

El balance del BCE supera por primera vez los cuatro billones de euros

THERE is a hawk in Central Park that sometimes dismembers its prey on the balcony outside Jeff Bewkes’s office. Guts are splattered around in the kind of Darwinian spectacle that any self-respecting media baron should appreciate as he plots plans for future world domination. Mr Bewkes, however, only manages a laconic shrug when he mentions the feathered predator.

The boss of Time Warner is an anti-mogul in more ways than one. In an industry long-dominated by imperious tycoons intent on amassing power—think of Rupert Murdoch, or Viacom’s Sumner Redstone in his heyday—Mr Bewkes has shrunk a content empire, not expanded it. He is about to sell it to AT&T for $109bn in the fifth-biggest takeover of all time. If the deal goes through shareholders will have made a 341% return during his tenure (including spin-offs and dividends), making Time Warner one of the best-performing big firms in America during that time.

Beneath his laid-back surfer persona, Mr Bewkes has been ruthless but in the rational pursuit of his owners’ interests, not his own vanity. His tenure can be split into three parts—culling, defending and preparing to exit on a high.

Back in…Continue reading

“YOU are either part of the solution or part of the problem,” it says in painted letters on a wall. “Stay hungry, stay foolish,” says the wall opposite. An old rickshaw sits among beanbags and a vase of flowers rests on an ancient oil barrel in the corner. “We wanted the space to feel like Google,” says Eleni Gabre-Madhin, the founder of blueMoon, a new agribusiness incubator that opened in Addis Ababa in February, without a trace of irony.

Incubators and their cousins, accelerators, provide hands-on training and mentoring, and often a physical space, to help early-stage business ideas develop. In Silicon Valley they find capital for startups and take a slice of equity in return for their services. Ms Gabre-Madhin says that blueMoon draws inspiration from Y Combinator, an American accelerator founded in 2005 whose investees include Dropbox and Airbnb. The new firm’s first cohort of startups will train at the office for four months, and it will give each a small cash injection in exchange for a 10% stake.

That is a rarity in Africa’s startup scene. A simpler and more common model is for “tech hubs” to provide office space, some networking…Continue reading

THOMAS DE LA RUE set up shop more than 200 years ago, printing newspapers, then playing cards and stamps. In 1860 a contract to print banknotes for Mauritius started a transformation. Today De La Rue is the largest commercial banknote and passport printer, involved in aspects of the production of currencies for 140 countries, and passports for over 40.

The British firm’s chief executive, Martin Sutherland, is relatively relaxed about the much-heralded death of cash. Despite advances in payments technology, and a shift to cards in Europe, the total demand for cash has proven remarkably resilient. Transaction values are rising rapidly in emerging economies, where hard currency is still the norm. De La Rue expects world demand for banknotes to grow by 3-4% a year for the foreseeable future.

But there are problems nonetheless. Even at the best of times, note production, which accounts for over 70% of the company’s revenues, is a volatile business. Contracts are lumpy. State-owned printers often call in commercial printers at short notice to manage spikes in demand, which are unpredictable. On top of that, national authorities are demanding better value. They are…Continue reading