Finanzas

Now everyone sees red

ON THE flanks of the Simandou mountains in south-eastern Guinea live remote colonies of West African chimpanzees. They alone should be grinning over the fate of those who have sought to turn their tropical habitat into Africa’s biggest iron-ore mine. No one else is laughing. Rarely has such a group of billionaires, hedge-fund barons, mining firms, government officials and go-betweens been snagged in such a woeful saga.

In theory, the prospect of digging up 2bn tonnes of ore from a country that is among the poorest on Earth should be encouraging, if corruption is kept in check. The government of Alpha Condé promised to do so upon taking office in 2010. But in reality the line between paying go-betweens to help win concessions and lining officials’ pockets is so blurry that it can cause mining firms endless trouble.

In recent months the plotline has shifted. During the past half-decade the businessman painted as the saga’s pantomime villain has been Beny Steinmetz, a globe-trotting Israeli diamond merchant, worth billions, whose lurid battles over Simandou with Rio Tinto, one of the…Continue reading

EMERGING markets have not been the same without Argentina, a country that embodies the promise and peril, the romance and the rockiness of the asset class. In 1988 it was one of the ten original members of the most popular emerging-market equity index, introduced by MSCI. In the late 1990s it was also the biggest member of the benchmark-bond indices compiled by JPMorgan Chase. But once it defaulted at the end of 2001, Argentina was exiled from global debt markets. And after it subsequently imposed capital controls on “hot money”, its shares suffered a similar banishment, ejected from MSCI’s index in 2009. It became a remote “frontier market”, like countries such as Bangladesh.

Since Mauricio Macri succeeded Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as president at the end of 2015, Argentina has been finding its way back from the financial periphery. It has floated its currency and lifted capital controls, recently abolishing a remaining requirement that foreign investors keep their money in the country for at least 120 days. In April the government sold $16.5bn of dollar bonds to international investors in a single day (a record for an…Continue reading

BUSINESS travellers have innumerable reasons to look forward to a visit to New York, and a few grounds to dread getting there. Chief among them are the city’s hellish airports. A study in November found that New York’s three international airports are the very worst among America’s 30 busiest hubs, in terms of ease of access, wait times and amenities.

The oft-derided LaGuardia came in dead last, with the highest rate of flight delays and cancellations, but the city’s bigger problem is John F. Kennedy Airport, which has more international passengers than any other airport in America. According to the study, it is massively inconvenient, with the longest drive time to the city centre and the longest waits to get through security.

That might be about to change. Last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo laid out a plan for a $10bn overhaul of JFK. One-fifth of that funding could go toward improving road access, which is described in the plan as a “confusing spaghetti network for on-airport roads that lead to multiple bottlenecks and…Continue reading

El presidente de Bankia, José Ignacio Gorigolzarri, admite errores pero dice que el España tiene el mejor mercado hipotecario del mundo»

WHY has economic growth been so sluggish in the developed world? The previous post showed that productivity in the global economy had been flat or falling in the last three years. And it suggested that the existence of «zombie» firms—uncompetitive survivors—might be one explanation.

As it happened, the OECD published a new paper yesterday which showed that might indeed be the case. The paper concludes that

the prevalence of, and resources sunk in, zombie firms have risen since the mid-2000s, which is significant given that recessions typically provide opportunities for restructuring and productivity-enhancing allocation

and that

a higher share of industry capital sunk in zombie firms tends to crowd-out the growth—measured in terms of investment and employment—of the typical non-zombie firm. 

All in all

a 3.5% rise in…Continue reading

Impossible is nothing

BEHIND closed doors in the Bavarian town of Ansbach a new factory is taking shape. That it will use robots and novel production techniques such as additive manufacturing (known as 3D printing) is not surprising for Germany, which has maintained its manufacturing base through innovative engineering. What is unique about this factory is that it will not be making cars, aircraft or electronics but trainers and other sports shoes—an $80bn-a-year industry that has been offshored largely to China, Indonesia and Vietnam. By bringing production home, this factory is out to reinvent an industry.

The Speedfactory, as the Ansbach plant is called, belongs to Adidas, a giant German sports-goods firm, and is being built with Oechsler Motion, a local firm that makes manufacturing equipment. Production is due to begin in mid-2017, slowly at first and then ramping up to 500,000 pairs of trainers a year. Adidas is constructing a second Speedfactory near Atlanta for the American market. If all goes well, they will spring up elsewhere, too.

The numbers are tiny for a company that makes some 300m pairs of sports shoes each year. Yet…Continue reading

Las compensaciones que cobran los afectados de las cláusulas suelo no tributarán, pero tendrán que devolver las deducciones fiscales realizadas

El lobby de las grandes empresas da por cumplidos los objetivos con los que se creó en febrero de 2011

WORK smarter, not harder. It is one of the more irritating things that a boss can tell you. But at the macroeconomic level, it is important. Growth can come from having more labour (recruiting more workers, or making existing employees work for longer hours), more capital, or from using that labour and capital more effectively—something known as total factor productivity (TFP). This can come from the kind of brilliant innovations devised by Thomas Edison (pictured) or the less-heralded but equally important improvements such as the adoption of the moving conveyor belt to speed up assembly work. Since there are limits to the amount of additional capital and labour, productivity is key to long-run growth.

Measuring productivity is far from easy; it tends to be the residual left over when all other factors have been accounted for. The OECD says it «can often be a measure of our ignorance». Still, the attached table is very striking. It comes from the American Chamber of Commerce (here’s the link, with thanks to…Continue reading

El índice registra una subida del 4,6% en el penúltimo mes del año y un ascenso interanual del 3,2%