Finanzas

La medida de Montoro afectará, sobre todo, al pago del IVA

El mejor año fue 1993, cuando ganó un 54,20%, pero en 2015 y 2016 cerró con números rojos

La inteligencia artificial amenaza a 1,1 millones de trabajadores en el mundo según un estudio del instituto McKinsey

El dinero procedente del extranjero dedicado al sector hotelero casi se duplica en un año

La agencia de calificación prevé una recuperación del empleo menor que la anunciada por el Gobierno

Economía y el PSOE buscan cerrar un acuerdo completo para no alargar y entorpecer la tramitación en el Congreso

KIYOSHI KIMURA does not like to lose. For the past six years he has outbid all comers for the first bluefin tuna of the year sold by Tokyo’s famed Tsukiji fish market. Last week Mr Kimura, who owns a chain of sushi shops, paid ¥74.2m ($642,000) to win the first fish. That nets out to some $3,000 per kilogram.

Folk wisdom has it that high tuna-auction prices signal future economic buoyancy. Mr Kimura has said that he pays the exorbitant prices to “encourage Japan”. But that rationale seems fishy.

After a rival Hong Kong bidder baited him, Mr Kimura paid three times as much for the Tsukiji tuna in 2013 as in the previous year—a record-high ¥155.4m. GDP growth did not replicate that rise, however, sinking from 1.7% to 1.4%. In fact, Japan’s economic fortunes and Tokyo’s season-opening tuna prices seem to float rather erratically (see chart). A deep dive by The Economist suggests that tuna prices explain only 6% of the fluctuation in GDP. The correlation is a red herring.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, are gutted. Bluefin tuna are endangered; stocks have plunged by 97% from their peak, according to one estimate. The…Continue reading

ON JANUARY 17th shareholders of Liberty Media Corporation, an American firm controlled by John Malone, a billionaire, are expected to approve a transaction that many hail as the sports deal of the decade. In September 2016 Liberty agreed to buy the Formula One (F1) motor-racing franchise from CVC, a private-equity group, for $8bn. F1, which generates annual revenue of $1.8bn, is now central to Liberty’s global plans: in a sign of the importance he attaches to the deal, Mr Malone has installed Chase Carey, a former president of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, as F1 chairman. The main Liberty subsidiary is to be renamed Formula One Group.

The deal has lots of attractions. For F1 it offers a potential solution to the problem of who will take over from Bernie Ecclestone, its 86-year-old impresario. There was no credible succession plan for the man whose wheeling and dealing has long held together the sport and its fractious collection of racing teams. With Mr Carey leading the search, there could be.

As for Liberty, F1 offers the sort of live, exclusive content it needs to lock in audiences that are peeling off to on-demand streaming…Continue reading

FOR fans of bitcoin, a digital currency, the year got off to a volatile start. On January 5th one bitcoin changed hands for nearly $1,150—almost as much as the record set three years ago. It has since dropped by 33%. Elsewhere in the land of monetary bits, things move more slowly but trouble is brewing: a potential patent war looms over the blockchain, a distributed ledger that authenticates and records every bitcoin transaction.

Heated fights over intellectual property are nothing new in promising technology markets. But given that the blockchain is expected to shake up everything from the way precious diamonds are safeguarded to the way shares are traded, the legal fights could be especially fierce.

On the face of it, the blockchain does not lend itself easily to staking out intellectual-property claims. Bitcoin’s creator, known only by his pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto, published a paper about his invention, coded the first implementation and then disappeared—meaning that the core of the technology is now part of the public domain and only important additions and variations could be patented. And the blockchain’s components are widely known. In America court decisions as well as a new law on the granting of patents make it difficult to claim ownership for such financial innovations.

This hasn’t stopped firms from trying to get patent…Continue reading

“HELICOPTER parent” may sound like an insult, but given the chance, most parents would probably opt for the help of a chopper to zoom little ones between school, football practice and piano lessons. Getting children where they need to go is a huge hassle and expense, especially in homes where both parents work. Hailing rides through firms like Uber and Lyft has made life more convenient for adults. But drivers are not supposed to pick up unaccompanied minors (although some are known to bend the rules).

Youngsters represent a fresh-faced opportunity. Ride-hailing for kids could be a market worth at least $50bn in America, hopes Ritu Narayan, the founder of Zum, one of the startups pursuing the prize. These services are similar to Uber’s, except they allow parents to schedule rides for their children in advance. Children are given a code word to ensure they find the right driver, and parents receive alerts about the pick-up and ride, including the car’s speed. These services promise more rigorous background checks, fingerprinting and training than typical ride-hailing companies.

Annette Yolas, who works in sales at AT&T, a wireless…Continue reading