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Europe's €200bn problem loans on property
March 16, 2010--There is more than €200bn ($275bn) of problem commercial real estate debt sitting in the books of European banks following profligate lending practices during the last property boom.
The worst of this is found in the UK and German markets, according to a report to be launched at the annual property festival in Cannes on Wednesday, with bad loans set for a lengthy 10-year workout through restructuring, forced sales and potential further bank writedowns.
CB Richard Ellis, the property consultancy, will on Wednesday say that there is about €970bn of debt outstanding.
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Source: FT.com
EU pulls hedge fund curbs, amid British opposition
March 16, 2010-- Plans for European finance ministers to vote through new laws curbing highly speculative investment fund managers were ditched at the last minute on Tuesday amid opposition from Britain, officials said.
Diplomats last week said the issue would be put to a vote, and that Britain was isolated.
But vigorously expressed opposition from London, in the run-up to a closely-fought general election there, appears to have killed a continental appetite to use a majority to ram through changes.
British Chancellor Alistair Darling told reporters that London was unable to sign up to new regulatory burdens that effectively prevented London-managed funds from "crossing the channel" and accessing the entire European Union marketplace.
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Source: EUbusiness
British row over leaked EU deficit report
March 16, 2010--Britain's Labour government came under fire from opposition Conservatives on Tuesday as a leaked European Commission report suggested that the public deficit needs cutting faster than anticipated.
The Tories leapt on excerpts from the report, due to be published on Wednesday, suggesting that current plans were not ambitious enough.
"This is a heavy blow for Gordon Brown's credibility," said George Osborne, who hopes to become Britain's finance minister if the Conservatives win general elections expected on May 6.
The EU commission report, leaked to British media, said: "The fiscal strategy in the convergence programme is not sufficiently ambitious and needs to be significantly reinforced.
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Source: EUbusiness
Portugal announces mass privatisation to fight rising debt
March 16, 2010--Portugal, under strong EU pressure to correct its public finances, announced sweeping privatisation measures affecting its airline, rail transport, postal, energy and paper industries, on Tuesday to fight a rise in debt.
Also covered by the crash programme are bank and insurance activities.
The privatisation would raise about 6.0 billion euros (8.22 billion dollars) by 2013, bringing in 1.2 billion euros this year and 1.8 billion euros next year, the government said.
The sales would lead to "increased productivity in these sectors and contribute to the essential reduction of the public debt," which currently amounts to 142.91 billion euros.
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Source: EUbusiness
Eurozone mess forces hand of economic government
March 16, 2010--The mess the eurozone finds itself in, with an unprecedented contingency plan now drawn up to bail out wayward countries like Greece, has forced Europe to sketch out a new form of cross-border economic government.
An agreement to design terms for bilateral loans from partner countries that share the euro currency instinctively cuts against the grain of decisions taken when the currency was launched 11 years ago, expressly to prohibit bailouts for fear of encouraging imprudent spending.
It marks the first major step toward building a system where economic policy is coordinated across the many and varied landscapes of the 16-nation area.
Lord Mandelson said: “We need to mobilise private investors on a totally new scale. That has to include examining the case for public-sector backed financial institutions to achieve this mobilisation.”
read more EEX Launches Phelix Week Futures
“This expansion of our product range closes the gap between the Spot and the Derivatives Market and enables our trading participants to implement financial hedging during
a usually volatile period“, Oliver Maibaum, Managing Director of EEX Power Derivatives
GmbH, explains and adds: “The week futures are the logical complement to the
Phelix Month, Quarter and Year Futures which can be traded at the moment.”
Just like the existing Phelix Futures products, the new products can also be traded and cleared by the Eurex participants through their existing infrastructure in the framework
of the cooperation between EEX and Eurex. read more Deutsche Bank names pair to Oppenheim read more First estimate for the fourth quarter of 2009-Employment down by 0.2% in the euro area and by 0.3% in the EU27 Compared with the same quarter of the previous year, employment fell by 2.0% in the euro area and by 2.1% in the EU27 in the fourth quarter of 2009. In the third quarter of 2009, employment decreased by 2.2% and 2.1% respectively. Eurostat estimates that, in the fourth quarter of 2009, 221.1 million men and women were employed in the EU27, of which 144.3 million were in the euro area. These figures are seasonally adjusted. Over the whole of 2009, employment decreased by 1.8% (2 721 000 persons) in the euro area and also by 1.8% (4 021 000 persons) in the EU27, compared with +0.9% and +0.7% respectively in 2008. read more EU rescue fund a 'long term' possibility: Almunia
"A European monetary fund, it's something to think about in the long term," he told a conference in Madrid.
He also said that coordination over budgets must be improved and strengthened and that the debt crisis in Greece must be resolved to get the eurozone economy back on track.
"The ball is in the court of the whole eurozone group... I will not recommend that it is played only in the long term," said Almunia, who was formerly the EU's economic affairs commissioner.
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March 15, 2010--The UK Treasury will target pension funds as a primary source of funding for billions of pounds in infrastructure projects, using a national bank which will bypass traditional fund management companies.
As part of a bid to raise an estimated £500bn (€548bn) in infrastructure investment over the next decade, the business secretary Peter Mandelson said traditional methods for investing in infrastructure were costly, time consuming and risky, and government needed to take a central role in providing the institutions necessary to support private investment.
Source: IP&E
March 15, 2010--– EEX Power Derivatives supplements the product range of tradable Phelix Futures on the Power Derivatives Market. From 29 March 2010, the trading participants of EEX will also be able trade financially settled futures on a weekly
basis.
The Phelix Week Futures is a financial derivatives contract which refers to the average Power Spot Market prices of future delivery periods. The Phelix Week Future with the load ranges base load and peak load can be traded for the current week and the next
four weeks.
Source: EEX
March 15, 2010--Deutsche Bank moved quickly to strengthen the management of Sal Oppenheim after completing the takeover of the crisis-hit private bank for €1bn.
Germany’s largest bank named two of its executives, Jürgen Dobritzsch and Jürgen Fiedler, to oversee financial control and risk management on an expanded executive board at Sal Oppenheim, which ran into trouble during the financial crisis. Another former Deutsche banker, Wilhelm von Haller, had already been installed as chief executive at its new subsidiary.
Source: FT.com
-2.0% and -2.1% respectively compared with the fourth quarter of 2008
March 15, 2010--The number of persons employed in the euro area1 (EA16) fell by 0.2% (347 000 persons) in the fourth quarter of 2009 compared with the previous quarter, according to national accounts estimates published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. In the same period, the number of persons employed in the EU271 decreased by 0.3% (583 000 persons). In the third quarter of 2009, employment declined by 0.5% in both zones. These figures are seasonally adjusted.
Falls in employment were recorded in manufacturing (-1.1% in the euro area and -1.0% in the EU27), construction (-0.4% and -0.7% respectively) and trade, transport & communication services (-0.5% in both zones). Financial services & business activities decreased by 0.1% in the euro area, but grew by 0.1% in the EU27. Agriculture increased by 0.5% and 0.1% respectively, and other services (which mainly includes public administration, health and education) grew by 0.2% in both zones.
Source: Eurostat
March 15, 2010--An emergency fund to rescue eurozone economies could be a "long-term" possibility, the European Union's Commissioner for Competition Joaquin Almunia said Monday.
But "we cannot allow ourselves the luxury of thinking in the long term if we don't think in the short and medium term," he said.
Source: EUbusiness
