Finanzas

La CNMC asegura que logra cobrar hasta un 80% de las sanciones pese al largo proceso judicial en el que se embarcan los expedientados

Las entidades no bajarán los costes cobrados para evitar el efecto llamada en los clientes

MORE than ten years have elapsed since Alan Greenspan stepped down from the Federal Reserve; a decade that has not been kind to his reputation. Having just read Sebastian Mallaby’s comprehensive biography*, «The Man Who Knew», it struck me that his career was a classic example of cognitive dissonance.

The main post-crisis criticism of Mr Greenspan was that he was a naive believer in market efficiency, failing to pop bubbles in the late 1990s or mid-2000s and failing to regulate the financial sector properly. He was, for a while, a disciple of the libertarian novelist, Ayn Rand. But Mr Mallaby shows that things were rather more complex than that characterisation suggests.

In a paper written back in 1959, for example, Mr Greenspan clearly seemed to understand the detrimental effect that bubbles could have. He wrote that

The higher the stock market gets at its peak and hence the greater decline required to return to «normal», the deeper the decline in economic activity 

In 2002, after the Enron scandal, Greenspan also spoke in favour of greater regulation of corporate accounting standards. smacking the table, he told a meeting…Continue reading

MOST economists might hazard a guess that voiding the bulk of a country’s currency overnight would dent its immediate growth prospects. On November 8th India took this abstruse thought experiment into the real world, scrapping two banknotes which made up 86% of all rupees in circulation. Predictably, the economy appears indeed to have been hobbled by the sudden “demonetisation”. Evidence of the measure’s costs is mounting, while the benefits look ever more uncertain. 

At least the new year has brought a semblance of monetary normality. For seven weeks queues had snaked around banks, the main way for Indians to exchange their old notes for new ones or deposit them in their accounts. That is over, largely because the window to exchange money closed on December 30th. The number of fresh notes that can be withdrawn from ATMs or bank counters is still curtailed, but the acute cash shortage is abating, at least in big cities.

As data trickle through, so is evidence of the economic price paid for demonetisation. Consumers, companies and investors all wobbled in late 2016. Fast-moving consumer goods, usually a reliable growth sector, retrenched…Continue reading

IT WAS in the spring of 2016 that Donald Trump singled out Ford Motors, calling its plans to build a plant in Mexico an “absolute disgrace” and promising it would not happen on his watch. Back then, it seemed remarkable that the candidate thought he could boss around a firm of Ford’s stature. On January 3rd Ford cancelled its $1.6bn project in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí and said it would instead invest $700m into an existing plant in Flat Rock, Michigan, to build electric and autonomous cars.

Ford’s manoeuvre seems more wheel-spin than U-turn. Mr Trump’s strong-arming of corporate America is real enough, and the carmaker will have gained much favour with the president-elect. But its decision can be explained largely in operational terms. The original plan was for the new Mexican plant to build chiefly Focus cars—small passenger vehicles for which demand has fallen, thanks to America’s love affair with SUVs, crossovers and pick-up trucks and to low petrol prices. The decision to scrap the new plant looks far more like Ford reducing its exposure to the small-car game in North America than reducing its footprint in Mexico, says George…Continue reading

Ritual contrition

THE probe in 2015 into one of Japan’s largest-ever accounting scandals, at Toshiba, an electronics and nuclear-power conglomerate that has been the epitome of the country’s engineering prowess, concluded that number-fiddling at the firm was “systemic”. It was found to have padded profits by ¥152bn ($1.3bn) between 2008 and 2014. Its boss, and half of the board’s 16 members, resigned; regulators imposed upon it a record fine of $60m.

Now its deal-making nous is in doubt too. In December 2015—the very same month that it forecast hundreds of billions of yen in losses for the financial year then under way, as it struggled to recover from the scandal—Toshiba’s American arm, Westinghouse Electric, bought a nuclear-construction firm, CB&I Stone & Webster. One year on, on December 27th, Toshiba announced that cost overruns at that new unit could lead to several billions of dollars in charges against profits.

Its shares fell by 42% in a three-day stretch as investors dumped them, fearing a write-down that could wipe out its shareholders’ equity, which in late September stood at…Continue reading

IN THE Bible, seven years of feast were followed by seven years of famine. For banks there have been ten lean years. Subprime-loan defaults started to rise in February 2007, causing a near-collapse of the industry in America and Europe. Next came bail-outs from governments, then years of grovelling before regulators, mass firings of staff and quarter after quarter of poor results that left banks’ shareholders disappointed. Now, a decade later, the moneylenders are quietly wondering if 2017 is the year in which their industry turns a corner.

Over the past six months the FTSE index of global bank shares has leapt by 24%. American banks have led the way, with the value of Bank of America rising by 67%, and that of JPMorgan Chase by 39%. In Europe BNP Paribas’ market value has risen by 52%. In Japan shares in the lumbering Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group—the rich world’s biggest bank by assets—have behaved like those of a frisky internet startup; they are up by 57%. Predictions about global banks’ future returns on equity have stopped falling, note analysts at UBS, a Swiss bank. Some of the biggest casualties of the financial crisis are even…Continue reading

Lone Star pagará 750 millones por Novo Banco

La tributación por sociedades mejora pero deben limarse las graves chapuzas

Tras la sentencia del Supremo, Santander, CaixaBank, Bankia, Sabadell e Ibercaja asumen parte de los costes que antes cobraban a los clientes