PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Invierno 2024

[pollo]

https://twitter.com/IdafeMartin/status/1762005147448930700

https://www.lesoir.be/570695/article/2024-02-26/des-immeubles-prives-bientot-requisitionnes-etterbeek-et-saint-gilles

https://twitter.com/IdafeMartin/status/1762085445481943302

https://www.lesoir.be/570699/article/2024-02-26/environ-4500-logements-vides-et-en-infraction-bruxelles

Saludos.

Pues supongo que a la larga esto se copiará en todos los sitios (menos en España, claro).

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12693213/02/24/solo-el-16-de-los-jovenes-espanoles-vive-fuera-del-hogar-familiar-frente-al-32-de-la-ue.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/opinion/noticias/12253498/05/23/los-espanoles-cada-vez-mas-pobres.html

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12692642/02/24/el-265-de-poblacion-espanola-esta-en-riesgo-de-pobreza-o-exclusion-social.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.pressreader.com/spain/el-economista/20240227/page/2/textview

Les Echos (Francia) | La soberanía alimentaria francesa está presionada

Financial Times (Reino Unido) | La crisis de Nigeria aumenta rápidamente

El doblaje se protege contra el golpe de la IA

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://cincodias.elpais.com/companias/2024-02-26/el-gobierno-creara-una-empresa-tecnologica-para-movilizar-20000-millones-y-explora-que-entre-en-telefonica.html

El Gobierno creará una empresa tecnológica para movilizar 20.000 millones y explora que entre en Telefónica

La sociedad integrará los activos de SEPI, con la entrada también en Perte Chip y Hub Digital

El Gobierno va a crear la Sociedad Estatal de Transformación Tecnológica, una entidad pública empresarial, en la que va a agrupas sus distintos activos tecnológicos: la SEPI, con la entrada en Telefónica, donde el Gobierno ha dado autorización para la compra de hasta un 10% del capital, e Indra; el hub audiovisual y Perte Chip.

Tendrá una capacidad de movilización de 20.000 millones de euros. La intención del ministro para la Transformación Digital y de la Función Pública, José Luis Escrivá, es presentar el plan al consejo de ministros, para que entre en funcionamiento en el plazo de tres meses.

Entre otras misiones, la nueva compañía trabajará en desarrollar el ecosistema industrial de toda la cadena de valor de los semiconductores, apoyará a las empresas innovadoras en tecnologías punta que requieran capital semilla, e impulsará el sector audiovisual con inversiones.

Según ha explicado Escrivá, la nueva empresa será la encargada de “liderar la inversión pública innovadora”.

https://www.eleconomista.es/tecnologia/noticias/12693690/02/24/escriva-anuncia-la-creacion-de-la-sett-la-futura-sepi-digital-para-inversiones-tecnologicas.html

https://www.eleconomista.es/telecomunicaciones/noticias/12692304/02/24/alvarezpallete-propone-en-el-mwc-una-alianza-global-entre-telecos-y-grandes-tecnologicas.html

https://www.eleconomista.es/tecnologia/noticias/12693307/02/24/necesita-espana-su-propio-chatgpt-para-que-va-a-servir-el-nuevo-proyecto-anunciado-por-sanchez.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/opinion/noticias/12693409/02/24/reglas-fiscales-un-nuevo-marco-de-gobernanza-economica.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/energia/noticias/12693803/02/24/raul-morales-soltec-nuestro-objetivo-en-2024-es-llegar-al-50-de-nuestras-ventas-de-trackers-en-el-mercado-americano.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/industria/noticias/12693233/02/24/el-gobierno-amplia-hasta-12-meses-el-plazo-a-las-ceramicas-para-el-pago-a-proveedores-y-recibir-ayudas.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/mercados-cotizaciones/noticias/12693344/02/24/las-emisiones-de-deuda-en-eeuu-superan-los-12-billones-de-dolares-con-los-tipos-todavia-en-su-techo.html

https://www.eleconomista.es/mercados-cotizaciones/noticias/12692509/02/24/los-inversores-devoran-fondos-de-renta-fija-al-mayor-ritmo-desde-mediados-de-2020-.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12692258/02/24/espana-necesita-una-avalancha-de-inmigrantes-y-retrasar-mas-la-jubilacion-para-evitar-un-colapso-laboral-segun-allianz.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12693542/02/24/krystalina-georgieva-fmi-pide-a-los-bancos-centrales-que-no-rebajen-los-tipos-demasiado-pronto.html

Saludos.

[Derby]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-27/german-commercial-real-estate-crash-is-looming-threat-for-banks

Germany’s Slow-Motion Property Crash Is a Looming Risk for Banks

A long-term view of property values has shielded banks so far
That could change soon if more forced sales hit the market

As fears about US commercial real estate roiled German banks this month, their message was clear: don’t worry, the vast majority of our property exposure is domestic.

That may not prove the comfort it seems.

While the country has so far avoided the rapid market corrections that rattled the US, experts argue that reflects arcane accounting practices shielding its lenders and investors from taking immediate hits. Relatively modest adjustments and benign provisions obscure the fact that German lenders are more exposed to commercial real estate than most of their European peers and, according to one study, extended loans more aggressively.

The result is a slow-motion property crash that threatens to accelerate as property owners such as Rene Benko’s Signa group of companies or landlord Adler Group are forced to sell, burdening smaller and mid-sized lenders that were just hitting their stride after bail-outs in the financial crisis. Some senior officials at the European Central Bank say the country will inevitably be a special focus as they examine CRE risks at banks across the region.

“This is definitely not just a US problem,” said Valeriya Dinger, a professor of economics at Germany’s University of Osnabrueck. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a wave of loan loss provisions for German banks on their domestic commercial real estate exposure,” she said, even if there’s no systemic risk.

German banks have the most commercial real estate loans in the European Union, along with their French peers, but they have classified a relatively small portion of those loans as non-performing. Recently, however, that share has been rising while it declined in several other countries.

The low level of loans marked as non-performing is in part because real estate valuers in Europe’s biggest economy use a long-term approach that smooths shifts in pricing on the basis that most investors don’t sell in a falling market. German banks also update valuations of buildings they have financed less regularly than peers in the US or UK, so problems can be masked for longer. Sometimes, they offer measures such as quarterly waivers on breaches of the loan agreement.

“There is nowhere to hide a covenant breach in the US,” said Keith Breslauer, founder of private equity firm Patron Capital Advisers. “That’s just not the case in Germany.”

Visibility is reduced further by rules that give smaller banks leeway in marking some securities to their market value, which can make it more difficult for investors to get an up-to-date picture of their financial state. The practice, however, also limits writing up unrealized gains, meaning individual lenders may actually be in better shape than they look.

Regulators have been urging lenders to prepare for potential losses, with the ECB pushing them to use some of last year’s bumper profits to build provisions. But accounting rules designed to stop banks from dodging taxes mean lenders are actually limited in how much they can set aside for souring debt.

Local watchdog BaFin for now sees the problem hitting individual lenders’ earnings, rather than threatening their solvency, in part because the troubles are concentrated in a smaller part of the market than they were during the financial crisis. And while higher rates are to blame for falling CRE values, they’ve also handed banks profits that should help absorb hits, said Birgit Rodolphe, executive director for bank resolution at the regulator.

“Commercial real estate is a lot smaller than residential real estate and the part of the cake that’s under pressure is smaller still,” she said in an interview at her offices in Frankfurt. “Also, it’s not like they’re holding worthless paper like back in 2008, there are buildings behind these loans.”

The value of those properties, however, remains the subject of much debate as the gap widens between the prices buyers are willing to pay and those sellers need so they can repay their loans. That’s a particular challenge in Germany, which tends to rely on actual transactions for real estate valuations, rather than sentiment-based inputs as is the case in some other countries.

An index published by German banking group VDP showed office values dropped 10% last year, the most since it began collecting the data in 2003. That index is based entirely on completed transactions, which have dried up in the recent market decline. Researcher Green Street, which bases its index on deals currently being negotiated, estimates that market values have plunged 36% since the first quarter of 2022, with some cities like Munich experiencing even sharper declines.

“If banks’ internal valuations prove unduly optimistic, or simply lag market sentiment, loan impairment charges could increase materially,” according to a report on Monday by Fitch Ratings. The ratings company expects losses from the lenders’ CRE exposure to remain high into 2025.

German property values are particularly vulnerable to higher borrowing costs because capitalization rates — or the potential return on a real estate investment — were pushed lower there than in other markets during the cheap money era. That reflected in part the fact that yields on German government bonds, a benchmark for investors, were negative at the time.

As government bond yields surged over the past two years, so did the returns real estate investors required on their deals. In Berlin, yields have risen to 4.4% from 2.4% at the start of 2022, according to data compiled by Savills. That means an office building generating an annual rent of €10 million ($10.9 million) would now be valued at just over €227 million if it traded today, a drop of almost €200 million in the period.

“We are careful and supervisors are following the developments closely, but I don’t see a reason for drama,” said Rodolphe at BaFin. “What I think isn’t sufficiently reflected in the current discussion is the fact that banks need their auditors to sign off on the appropriateness of their provisions.”

Still, differences in the way that appraisal rules are applied and interpreted means declines that would have been recognized in the UK or the US have yet to fully show up. If and when they do, that could bring swathes of commercial real estate debt closer to breaching lending terms, a move that would force lenders to provision for additional losses and also hold more capital against them.

“Banks have been more open to being patient with borrowers and delaying” the hurt in Germany, said Jackie Bowie, a managing partner at risk management firm Chatham Financial. “There is more pain to come in real estate valuations, so what does that mean for lenders and does that mean there is the potential for a crisis?”

A survey by Bayes Business School published last year showed German lenders extended senior loans worth as much as 80% of a building’s value, the highest level in Europe. While the majority of lending took place at lower thresholds, with larger buildings typically financed at 60% of their value, it’s a stark contrast to the UK where banks have been more conservative since they got scarred in the global financial crisis.

Many of the German banks that are now staring at losses from CRE share that experience, yet it didn’t prevent them from taking risks which are now coming back to haunt them. It will be “pretty embarrassing” if banks that were bailed out in the financial crisis are shown not to have a grip on their risks, said Dinger.

Deutsche Pfandbriefbank AG, a specialized lender that emerged from the wreckage of Hypo Real Estate, Germany’s biggest casualty of the credit crunch, saw its bonds sell off sharply in recent weeks over concerns related to its US exposure.

Now, the market is awaiting earnings from Landesbank Hessen-Thueringen, better known as Helaba, for any impairments when it reports earnings next month. Half of its real estate finance portfolio of almost €40 billion at the end of June was related to office buildings, a particular pain point. Many other lenders also have large commercial real estate books, including exposure to the US, such as Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg.

Officials at LBBW, PBB and Helaba, which in October raised its pretax profit guidance for 2023, declined to comment.



The collapse of Benko’s Signa shows what can happen when the wide gap between appraised values runs into the reality of market pricing and the vital role that regulators can play when they force banks to look more closely. The ECB pushed some banks to build provisions for losses on their exposure, Bloomberg reported in August. Signa later blamed the regulator for its demise, a claim the watchdog has rejected. Since then, Switzerland’s Julius Baer Group Ltd. has written off all its Signa loans.

Another reason that provisions have remained fairly modest for now is that some lenders are agreeing workout plans with their borrowers, said Bowie at Chatham Financial. They can include offering quarterly waivers on existing breaches and short-term loan extensions, provided landlords have a clear plan for sales or building improvements, she said.

It’s a well thumbed playbook for some German lenders.

Back in the late 1990s while working at Lehman Bros., “we looked at the UK loan book of a German bank,” said Breslauer at Patron Capital. “Once we got the data, we saw that almost every single loan that was classified as performing had notes in the files to show it had been restructured at least three times. I suspect the same is happening today.”

[Derby]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-27/abrdn-exodus-continues-with-17-6-billion-in-full-year-outflows

Abrdn CEO Rules Out Breaking Up Firm as Outflows Continue

*Money manager saw an exodus of £17.6 billion last year
*Stephen Bird is seeking to cut costs, streamline operations

Abrdn Plc Chief Executive Officer Stephen Bird dismissed the possibility of the company being broken up as the money manager saw another year of net outflows amid efforts to stop the exodus.

The Edinburgh-based fund house reported net outflows of £17.6 billion ($22.3 billion) last year across its businesses, compared with a total of £39.7 billion in 2022. Net operating revenue decreased 4% to £1.4 billion in 2023 while adjusted operating profit declined 5% to £249 million, Abrdn said in a filing Tuesday.

Bird, who took over in 2020 and promised to reset operations, said there is “significant work ahead” and added he was confident Abrdn will be “successful in delivering future growth.” In a media call, he told reporters that the company is now a modern investment firm.

Adjusted earnings per share on a diluted basis rose to 13.9 pence from 10.5 pence in 2022. Shares of the company jumped as much as 7.8% in early London trading.

But the stock is still down almost 40% since the end of 2020, compared with a 19% gain in the FTSE 100 Index, as Abrdn has been struggling to turn around its performance after the merger of Standard Life and Aberdeen in 2017. Bird has sought to streamline operations, cut costs and reduce the firm’s reliance on actively managed mutual funds. But those efforts have largely failed to check the outflows.

Assets under management shrank to a fresh low of £495 billion at the end of the year.

Last month, the money manager announced plans for another round of job cuts to rein in costs. It said it would eliminate roughly 500 roles, or 10% of its workforce, as part of a program to save at least an annualized £150 million. The proposal involves removal of management layers, raising efficiency in outsourcing and technology as well as reduction of overheads in group functions and support services, the firm said.

[Derby]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/why-we-risk-a-cartoon-version-of-capitalism/ar-BB1iWuNf

Why We Risk a Cartoon Version of Capitalism

It sometimes feels as if we are living in a cartoon version of market capitalism, where shareholders have given up trying to control companies.

Money floods into shares based on memes, is shifted around by algorithms based on past patterns, or goes into vast passive index trackers sold on the basis of being virtually free. None have an incentive to devote resources to keeping the corporate bureaucracy in check, since day traders and hedge funds will be gone before the next CEO meeting, while passive funds can’t sell even if the CEO is thrown in prison.

Reality isn’t as bad as the cartoon. There are still stock pickers out there who buy and hold, so really care who runs the business. But the situation is bad enough to make the biggest equity investor in the world worry that the passive approach that dominates its own strategy risks damaging markets. It’s getting more active as a result.

“Not everybody can just be passive,” said Nicolai Tangen, who runs Norway’s $1.5 trillion oil fund, the Government Pension Fund Global. “You can’t basically free ride on a well-functioning market. Somebody needs to vote.”

Norway’s oil fund, created to hold the profits from the country’s vast fossil-fuel reserves, is stepping up its involvement with companies and has asked the Norwegian parliament for permission to start buying companies outright.

The fund became the lead plaintiff, along with a large Swedish pension fund, in a class-action case against the defunct Silicon Valley Bank, its management and advisers, the first time it has led such a case. This brings Norway in alongside a handful of American state pension funds that frequently take the lead in class actions against companies—the ultimate way shareholders enforce control of big business in the litigious U.S.

It is one of the great ironies of 21st-century capitalism that because private-sector investors are so ineffective at corporate governance, state-run funds have stepped in instead.

A market dominated by passive management means little oversight of what executives spend shareholder cash on, and could lead to share prices disconnected from corporate profitability, as index trackers blindly buy no matter what.

True, hard-core activist hedge funds lead proxy fights against incompetent boards, and underperforming companies make themselves targets for private-equity takeovers.

But capitalism’s theoretical goal of harnessing the wisdom of crowds to ensure the best allocation of capital is at risk. That’s because there’s insufficient oversight of executives at companies that haven’t yet run into enough trouble to attract the attention of activists or buyout shops.

The system has ended up with a handful of overworked stewardship specialists at passive funds trying to vote on thousands of resolutions a year. Voting decisions even from active funds tend to be outsourced to just two dominant proxy advisers—perhaps wise, but hardly a crowd.

Passive funds, dominated by Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street, care a bit about governance, since they own pretty much everything (and attract public criticism if they fail to vote).

But they don’t have a strong incentive to put resources behind monitoring companies. They compete fiercely on price, so don’t want to spend much. And they run client money, not their own money, so even if better monitoring made a stock outperform, they would only reap a small benefit.

Large, long-term investors care a lot more, because they will still be around to suffer the consequences if a CEO wastes their cash on gold-plated toilet seats in the executive bathroom or on ego-driven takeovers.

Most of the biggest long-term pools of cash are state-run in some form, but university and charity endowments share similar incentives, without government control. Unlike passive funds, they have the ability to sell their stock in firms that won’t listen.

Nick Moakes, chief investment officer of Britain’s Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s largest charity endowments, pushes companies to be what he calls “sustainable in the broadest sense,” and has no passive holdings.

“If you’re going to own things for the long term you want to be in companies that are going to be around for the long term,” he says. That means both selecting stocks, and engaging with management.

Norway’s oil fund is particularly interesting because of its power. Not only does it have on average 1.5% of every listed company, but its transparent approach to how it plans to vote its shares means many others follow its lead. According to a study in December, this almost triples its voting impact. However, unlike Wellcome, it is only about 15% active in its holdings of developed market stocks.

The risk for investors is that political objectives edge out financial ones, as briefly seemed to be happening with some of the passive funds’ adoption of environmental goals, before a backlash forced a retreat.

There’s quite a lot of that. Norway’s oil fund’s rules and its ethics council block investment in oil, tobacco and nuclear-weapons stocks, among others. Since 2022, it has to try to persuade companies to comply with the Paris Agreement’s 2050 net-zero emissions goals.

Tangen insists the fund primarily wants the companies it invests in to make money in the long term. That means focusing on issues such as executive pay, board independence, the split between chairman and chief executive, directors having too many jobs or staying too long.

“We do not consider ourselves a global policeman,” he says. “We do not operate as a public-sector entity. We’re hopefully shrewd capitalist investors. Everything we do we do to enhance future long-term returns.”

If politicians can resist the urge to meddle, and state funds behave purely from a profit motive, the drawbacks of the cartoon version of capitalism can be overcome. Tangen thinks things are going in the right direction.

But as passive funds grow ever larger, it becomes ever harder to stop corporate executives from adopting a Mickey Mouse version of corporate governance. I worry that ceding too much power over companies to state funds will eventually lead to more political meddling and less focus on ensuring companies are well run. Still, it’s better than the hands-off approach of so many shareholders today.

[Derby]

https://elpais.com/economia/2024-02-27/vivienda-presenta-el-nuevo-indice-de-precios-para-poner-limites-a-los-alquileres.html

Vivienda presenta el nuevo índice de precios para poner límites a los alquileres

El ministerio dará a conocer los detalles del sistema este martes, un día después de su desencuentro definitivo con la Generalitat catalana

El Ministerio de Vivienda acelera el paso tras el desencuentro de este lunes con la Generalitat. El departamento que dirige Isabel Rodríguez está dispuesto a presentar este mismo martes el nuevo índice de precios de alquiler que permitirá poner topes a las rentas en las comunidades autónomas que declaren áreas tensionadas, según ha adelantado la Cadena SER y confirman fuentes del Gobierno. De momento, solo Cataluña ha iniciado los trámites que exige la ley de vivienda para poner límites máximos a los arrendamientos, aunque en la Generalitat no gusta el sistema escogido por el ministerio y así lo dejo patente la consejera del ramo, Ester Capella, tras reunirse con la ministra este lunes en Madrid.

Gobierno y Generalitat habían pactado publicar conjuntamente el nuevo sistema y la memoria de declaración de áreas tensionadas, que son los dos requisitos que quedaban pendientes para que Cataluña pueda controlar los precios de alquiler. Y se habían comprometido a hacerlo antes de acabar el mes. Este lunes, Capella avisó de que la publicación de la memoria sería “inminente”, pero el ministerio decía seguir “sin fecha” para presentar el índice. La semana pasada, fuentes del ministerio descartaban precisamente hacerlo este martes por la coincidencia con el Consejo de Ministros, aunque el índice no debe pasar por este órgano. Las mismas fuentes aseguran que todo “se ha precipitado”. Esta misma mañana, en la sede ministerial, el índice será presentado en una conferencia de prensa que dará el secretario de Estado de Vivienda y Agenda Urbana, David Lucas. El número dos del ministerio ha sido, en los últimos años, quien ha llevado el peso de las negociaciones de la ley de vivienda por la parte socialista.

Aunque oficialmente no se han dado detalles, el Departamento de Territorio catalán dio alguna pista este lunes sobre cómo será el nuevo indicador. Capella, quien insistió en el argumento de que “no bajará los precios en Cataluña” y solo los mantendrá en el nivel actual, argumentó que eso se debe a que el índice del ministerio ofrece “un rango alto y uno bajo”. Es decir, que para cada inmueble no fija un precio estándar, sino una horquilla que, según los cálculos de la Generalitat, “en muchos supuestos supera el 45%”.

En una nota para aclarar los motivos de su descontento, la consejería catalana señaló que el sistema se basta, como la actual estadística oficial, en datos facilitados anualmente por la Agencia Tributaria. Esto es una diferencia con el índice catalán, que la Generalitat quería que se homologase en el oficial, basado en los depósitos de los nuevos contratos de alquiler. La referencia será la sección censal, según los detalles que desveló la Generalitat, y el “rango de valores” que ofrece “se adapta la superficie y otras características de la vivienda y del contrato de arrendamiento”.

Además, la Generalitat dijo que el sistema solo tiene en cuenta casas de una determinada superficie (entre 30 y 150 metros cuadrados), y excluye las viviendas nuevas o que hayan sido reformadas integralmente en los últimos cinco años. La Administración catalana aseguró que ha hecho dos comparativas entre su sistema y el del ministerio, una de ellas con “23.000 muestras concretas”. Y criticó que, respecto a su índice, el importe de un mismo piso puede variar hasta en 400 euros al mes. Por último, señaló la falta de criterios objetivos para determinar si un inmueble entra en el rango alto o bajo. En concreto, citó que uno de los elementos es el estado de conservación de la vivienda, y puesto que eso dependerá de los propietarios y la Administración tiene pocas posibilidades de comprobarlo, estos tenderán a decir que es muy bueno para irse al límite superior, según el relato de la Generalitat.

La ley de vivienda fija varios requisitos para poder poner topes a los alquileres. El primero es la declaración de áreas tensionadas de precios, un trámite que deben iniciar las comunidades autónomas, puesto que tienen transferidas las competencias en Vivienda. De momento, solo Cataluña ha dado ese paso, que parece imposible en todas las que gobierna el PP, contrario a la norma. La Generalitat ha incluido en una única área tensionada a 140 municipios de todo el territorio. Pero no basta con esa declaración y la publicación de una memoria de medidas correctivas: es necesario que haya un índice de referencia, distinto al que se publica desde hace unos años, porque su actualización es poco ágil. Eso es lo que el Ministerio de Vivienda se comprometió a aprobar este febrero. Este sistema haría que los grandes propietarios (más de 10 inmuebles, aunque se puede bajar a cinco) tengan que ajustarse a los importes que marca. Los pequeños caseros, que son la mayoría, simplemente tendrían que congelar la renta del anterior contrato.