PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Primavera 2024

[asustadísimos]

[Perder a Derby sería dificilísimo de sobrellevar.]

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://countrymeters.info/es/Spain

Saludos.

[sudden and sharp]

SATURDAY'S OFFTOPIC/





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https://elpais.com/noticias/max/

[Derby]

https://www.newsweek.com/china-moves-away-us-dollar-hit-new-milestone-1901901

China's Moves Away From US Dollar Hit New Milestone

China sold a record amount of U.S. government bonds in the first quarter of 2024, according to U.S. Treasury data, continuing what many economists believe is a strategic shift away from dollar assets.

In the first three months of 2024, China sold $53.3 billion worth of U.S. Treasurys and agency bonds.

China's actions come as it rapidly increases its purchases of gold and other commodities, part of a broader strategy to diversify its assets amid rising geopolitical tensions with the U.S. Observing the economic impact of sanctions on Russia following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, some analysts say China aims to mitigate similar risks.

Craig Shapiro, a macro adviser to LaDuc Trading, identified three primary reasons for this trend. "The handling of Russian reserves by the U.S. and other G7 countries, including threats of expropriations and sanctions, likely prompted China to reduce its exposure to U.S. treasury assets to avoid being similarly targeted," he told Newsweek.



He also noted the impact of rising U.S. fiscal deficits.

"China probably anticipates that U.S. interest rates will continue to rise due to persistent fiscal deficits, making it prudent to sell now rather than risk losses or repayment in devalued dollars," he added. Selling these holdings could help China manage its domestic economy without risking the devaluation of the yuan.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell said this week the monetary authority was likely to maintain the federal funds interest rate of 5.25-5.50 percent, where it has remained since last July, longer than previously expected, due to persistent inflation.

Brad Setser, an economist at the New York City-based Council on Foreign Relations think tank, offered a different perspective in an article late last year.

He argued that the share of U.S. dollars in China's reserves has been stable since 2015. He cited evidence suggesting the the dollar share in China's reserves had since 2015 been generally stable.

"If a simple adjustment is made for Treasuries held by offshore custodians like Belgium's (financial service provider) Euroclear, China's reported holdings of U.S. assets look to be basically stable at between $1.8 and $1.9 trillion," Setser wrote.

China's accumulation of raw materials extends to crude oil, where it remains the largest importer. In 2023, the country bought a record 11.3 million barrels per day, a 10 percent increase from 2022, driven by a surge in fuel demand after lifting pandemic restrictions.

Some economists have speculated that China's commodity buying spree could signal a strategic weakening of its currency, the yuan. Devaluation could make Chinese exports cheaper and more competitive globally, appealing to China's leadership amid a manufacturing surplus and low consumer confidence.

However, such a move carries with it significant risks, including higher import costs, increased inflation, potential instability in global currency markets, and the risk of trade wars as countries face an influx of cheaper Chinese goods. Economists thus refer to this as a "nuclear option."

Newsweek reached out to China's foreign ministry with a written request for comment.

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/b6bb50b9-4f4e-4acb-ad5f-90d5ac3beaa5

How long can the good times keep rolling in markets?

We should at least be alive to the risks of a reckoning

Now that US interest rates seem to have stabilised, there are supposedly way too many deals being cooked up for bankers to take a summer break. As the Financial Times has reported, the joke around Wall Street these days is that August in the tony enclave of the Hamptons on Long Island has been cancelled. “There’s money everywhere,” the co-founder of one alternative asset manager was quoted as saying at this month’s Milken Institute conference.

The Hamptons quip is probably an exaggeration. But it’s certainly fair to say some green shoots are sprouting in the capital markets, at least in the bellwether investment banking products.

For instance, first-quarter M&A deal values in the US and in Europe harked back to the dealmaking enthusiasm of the pandemic years, according to Linklaters. In the US, the value of public M&A deals topped $224.3bn, the highest value of deals since the second quarter of 2022, when the deal values were $260bn. In Europe, deal values reached $47bn in the first quarter — also the highest since the second quarter of 2022 — driven by an increase in dealmaking in the UK.

According to S&P Global, global bond issuance in the first quarter of 2024 increased by 15 per cent, to $2.4tn, from $2tn in the first quarter of 2023. And last week, there was a rush of new issuance in both the investment-grade and high-yield bond markets.

One not so bright spot — initial public offerings. IPO issuance in the first quarter 2024 continued to decline, according to S&P Global, to the lowest level since the second quarter of 2022. But April was the busiest month for IPOs since November 2021, according to Renaissance Capital, which also tracks IPO issuance.

So good times it seems. But all of this raises a question. We are seeing a turn downwards in the interest rate cycle but without the usual painful economic correction that can accompany such pivots. Are we overdue a reckoning? The stock market might be one place to look for signs that things are getting out of hand after the more than doubling of the benchmark S&P 500 from pandemic lows in 2020.

David Einhorn, the reclusive hedge fund manager at Greenlight Capital who correctly predicted the implosion of Lehman Brothers in 2008, is pretty clear that things are not all right. “The stock market is fundamentally broken!” Greenlight declared in its first-quarter letter to his investors. Einhorn’s beef with the equity markets, as the letter outlined, seems to be that investors either don’t “care about valuation” or cannot “figure out valuation”.

He believes that old-fashioned value investing, where investors find stocks that are fundamentally undervalued and hold them until other investors figure out what they have been missing, is all but dead. He thinks index funds are ruling the markets and making the mistake of overinvesting in overvalued stocks and underinvesting in undervalued stocks.

“As several trillion dollars have been redeployed in this fashion in recent years, it has fundamentally broken the market,” according to the Greenlight letter. The firm claims not to be complaining. Rather, it says, it is “excited” to invest at this moment because “once these undervalued stocks underperform long enough, some of them become ridiculously cheap”.

Einhorn might not have had a great 2024 so far. His hedge fund returned 4.9 per cent in the first
quarter of 2024 compared with a rise of 10.6 per cent for the S&P 500. But that came after an impressive 2022 and 2023, during which Greenlight made returns of almost 33 per cent and 22 per cent, respectively.

It’s hard to know which camp is right — the Wall Street banking optimists, who get paid to be upbeat, or Einhorn, who has made a fortune on occasion by being pessimistic. But there are substantive issues overhanging markets — the many ongoing global conflicts, the continued uncertainty around the Federal Reserve’s direction of interest rates, and the outcome of the November US presidential election, which could very well return Donald Trump to the White House.

It seems to me we should at least be alive to the risks of a reckoning. Tiff Macklem, the governor of the Bank of Canada, has argued likewise, warning on May 9 that “some indicators of financial stress have risen” and that the valuation of “some financial assets appear to have become stretched”.

“This increases the risk of a sharp correction that could generate system-wide stress,” he said. “What’s most important is that to properly manage risks, financial system participants need to remain proactive. And financial authorities need to remain vigilant.”

[Derby]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/companias/2024-05-17/sareb-vende-a-axactor-una-cartera-de-creditos-de-1500-millones.html

Sareb vende a Axactor una cartera de créditos de 1.500 millones

El banco malo se deshace de préstamos improductivos en la que será su única transacción de este tipo en 2024


Javier Torres, presidente de Sareb (izquierda), y Leopoldo Puig, consejero delegado, en sendas imágenes cedidas por la empresa.

Sareb acaba de cerrar la que será su operación del año en ventas de portfolios. La (Sociedad de Gestión de Activos procedentes de la Banca) ha traspasado a la compañía noruega Axactor una cartera, llamada Génova, con valor de 1.500 millones y compuesta por créditos fallidos sin garantía hipotecaria, según revelan fuentes del sector. El asesor financiero de la operación ha sido PwC.

Cinco Días publicó a inicios de esta semana que Sareb tenía en el mercado esta cartera y había preparado el proceso para traspasar otra llamada Guiza, por 800 millones de préstamos con garantía hipotecaria. Finalmente, según las fuentes de sector, el conocido como banco malo ha decidido no realizar la transacción de Guiza.

Esta gran transacción será la única de este tipo de venta de carteras de créditos improductivos, que tienen origen a empresas promotoras y no particulares. El año pasado ya vendió otra de 3.000 millones, bautizada como Victoria, también a Axactor. Esa cartera fue la mayor de su historia traspasada por volumen nominal.

Los 1.500 millones traspasados son de valor nominal, ya que su valor real es muy inferior, aunque el importe no ha trascendido. Se trata de préstamos unsecured (en inglés utilizado en el argot financiero) o sin colateral inmobiliario.

El comprador, Axactor, es una empresa cotizada en Oslo. Se dedica a la compra de este tipo de créditos NPL (non performin loans) a los bancos, que penalizan a las entidades financieras y tienen interés en desprenderse de ellos, para gestionar esa deuda y realizar el cobro.

Sareb nació en 2012 con más de 200.000 créditos e inmuebles procedentes de las cajas con problemas ligados al ladrillo. La sociedad, que tiene un periodo de vida hasta 2027, ha logrado reducir en 24.456 millones el volumen de esos activos, ya que arrancó su actividad con 50.781 millones. En la actualidad, cuenta con 8.795 millones en préstamos fallidos y 14.309 millones en inmuebles.

La entidad financiera presidida por Javier Torres cambió desde hace unos años su estrategia de ventas de grandes carteras, ya que la prioridad ahora pasa por transformar los créditos fallidos en inmuebles mediante la adjudicación, vía judicial, y su posterior venta en el canal minorista. Eso supone más tiempo para la empresa pero también lograr un mayor retorno.

En sus inicios, Sareb traspasó grandes carteras a entidades como H.I. G., Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Canyon, Oaktree, entre otras.

Desde 2022, esta entidad es pública, controlada en un 50% por el FROB (dependiente del Ministerio de Economía de Carlos Cuerpo). Aunque cuenta con inversores privados como Santander (22,2% del capital), Caixabank (12,2%) y Sabadell (6,6%).

La venta de carteras como Génova servirán a la entidad como ingresos que en gran parte van a amortizar su enorme deuda. El banco malo se endeudó en 50.781 millones en el momento de su nacimiento para comprar los activos de las entidades con problemas y otro de sus cometidos es ir reduciendo esa deuda, avalada por el Tesoro, con la caja del negocio. El pasado año, la empresa pública amortizó 1.068 millones de ese pasivo, por lo que todavía le queda 29.413 millones de endeudamiento.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/opinion/noticias/12820925/05/24/errores-que-atrapan-a-los-autonomos.html

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12820963/05/24/cerca-de-170000-autonomos-tendran-que-devolver-las-ayudas-ligadas-al-covid.html

Saludos.

[sudden and sharp]

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[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/481d418e-9366-4152-8ec5-92b81d020991

Russian court seizes assets worth €700mn from UniCredit, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank

Move against western lenders follows dispute with a subsidiary of Gazprom

A St Petersburg court has seized over €700mn-worth of assets belonging to three western banks — UniCredit, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank — according to court documents.

The seizure marks one of the biggest moves against western lenders since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine prompted most international lenders to withdraw or wind down their businesses in Russia. It comes after the European Central Bank told Eurozone lenders with operations in the country to speed up their exit plans.

The moves follow a claim from Ruskhimalliance, a subsidiary of Gazprom, the Russian oil and gas giant that holds a monopoly on pipeline gas exports.

The court seized €463mn-worth of assets belonging to Italy’s UniCredit, equivalent to about 4.5 per cent of its assets in the country, according to the latest financial statement from the bank’s main Russian subsidiary.

Frozen assets include shares in subsidiaries of UniCredit in Russia as well as stocks and funds it owned, according to the court decision that was dated May 16 and was published in the Russian registrar on Friday.

According to another decision on the same date, the court seized €238.6mn-worth of Deutsche Bank’s assets, including property and holdings in its accounts in Russia.

The court also ruled that the bank cannot sell its business in Russia; it would already require the approval of Vladimir Putin to do so. The court agreed with Rukhimallians that the measures were necessary because the bank was “taking measures aimed at alienating its property in Russia”.

On Friday, the court decided to seize Commerzbank assets, but the details of the decision have not yet been made public so the value of the seizure is not known. Ruskhimalliance asked the court to freeze up to €94.9mn-worth of the lender’s assets.

The dispute with the western banks began in August 2023 when Ruskhimalliance went to an arbitration court in St Petersburg demanding they pay bank guarantees under a contract with the German engineering company Linde.

Ruskhimalliance is the operator of a gas processing plant and production facilities for liquefied natural gas in Ust-Luga near St Petersburg. In July 2021, it signed a contract with Linde for the design, supply of equipment and construction of the complex. A year later, Linde suspended work owing to EU sanctions.

Ruskhimalliance then turned to the guarantor banks, which refused to fulfil their obligations because “the payment to the Russian company could violate European sanctions”, the company said in the court filing.

The list of guarantors also includes Bayerische Landesbank and Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, against which Ruskhimalliance has also filed lawsuits in the St Petersburg court.

UniCredit said it had been made aware of the filing and “only assets commensurate with the case would be in scope of the interim measure”.

Deutsche Bank said it was “fully protected by an indemnification from a client” and had taken a provision of about €260mn alongside a “corresponding reimbursement asset” in its accounts to cover the Russian lawsuit.

“We will need to see how this claim is implemented by the Russian courts and assess the immediate operational impact in Russia,” it added.

Commerzbank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Italy’s foreign minister has called a meeting on Monday to discuss the seizures affecting UniCredit, two people with knowledge of the plans told the Financial Times.

UniCredit is one of the largest European lenders in Russia, employing more than 3,000 people through its subsidiary there. This month the Italian bank reported that its Russian business had made a net profit of €213mn in the first quarter, up from €99mn a year earlier.

It has set aside more than €800mn in provisions and has significantly cut back its loan portfolio. Chief executive Andrea Orcel said this month that while the lender was “continuing to de-risk” its Russian operation, a full exit from the country would be complicated.

The FT reported on Friday that the European Central Bank had asked Eurozone lenders with operations in the country for detailed plans on their exit strategies as tensions between Moscow and the west grow.

Legal challenges over assets held by western banks have complicated their efforts to extricate themselves. Last month, a Russian court ordered the seizure of more than $400mn of funds from JPMorgan Chase following a legal challenge by Kremlin-run lender VTB. A court subsequently cancelled part of the planned seizure, Reuters reported.

[Cadavre Exquis]

Otra muesca en el revólver de pp.cc.:

El Tema de la semana La economía conseguirá el hito histórico de controlar la inflación

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12820910/05/24/el-consumo-y-el-empleo-propiciaran-un-aterrizaje-suave-del-pib-de-eeuu.html

https://www.eleconomista.es/mercados-cotizaciones/noticias/12821164/05/24/los-bancos-centrales-logran-volver-a-meter-la-inflacion-en-el-tubo-de-la-pasta-de-dientes.html

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12820945/05/24/el-mercado-sube-tres-decimas-hasta-el-29-el-alza-de-la-economia-global.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/banca-finanzas/noticias/12819697/05/24/de-guindos-aboga-por-las-fusiones-bancarias-transfronterizas.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/vivienda-inmobiliario/noticias/12819596/05/24/el-esfuerzo-del-alquiler-cruza-la-linea-roja-en-ocho-capitales-barcelona-y-palma-estan-en-situacion-critica-.html

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/el-economista/20240517/page/39/textview

Los concursos de acreedores repuntan un 50,5% en abril

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.europapress.es/economia/macroeconomia-00338/noticia-deuda-publica-suma-10400-millones-marzo-registra-maximos-161-billones-20240517102459.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12820883/05/24/el-ipc-de-la-zona-euro-se-estanca-a-las-puertas-del-primer-recorte-de-tipos-del-bce.html

Saludos.

[Saturio]

https://countrymeters.info/es/Spain

Saludos.

Hay algo raro ahí. No se a qué se refieren con "este año" pero el dato de nacimientos y defunciones me parece rarísimo porque llevamos varios años consecutivos con más defunciones que nacimientos. En concreto, en 2023 fueron 430.000 defunciones frente a 322.000 nacimientos. En 2022 464.417 y 329.251...
Desde 2017 el crecimiento vegetativo es negativo y de valor absoluto creciente, teniendo en cuenta que 2020 fue una excepción.