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Splintered Europe share market seen ripe for abuse
March 15, 2010--The splintering of Europe's share markets into numerous trading platforms in recent years has created a fertile field for market abuse and made it more difficult to detect, a group of London market consultants said.
The EU's Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID) in 2007 opened exchanges to competition from low-cost new rival platforms known as multilateral trading facilities (MTFs).
"Now there is so much market fragmentation and competition that we have got away from a fair and orderly market," said Brian Taylor, a member of the new Alliance of Independent Advisors to Financial Markets, or Avenues, at a media briefing on Tuesday.
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Source: Yahoo Finance
The value of shares listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange reaches €85 billion
BME’s Report: Listings and Public Offerings, the pillars of economic transformation and stock market growth
In 230 listings and public offerings over the last 25 years
March 16, 2010--Between 1986 and 2009 there were 230 listings and public offerings on the Spanish stock exchange worth €85 bn, according to the Report on Initial Public Offerings and Listings, presented today by BME.
The report describes Spain’s extraordinary economic development over the last 25 years, with GDP that has increased more than five times since 1986, the year the country joined the EU.
The report highlights the importance of the stock exchange as the key driver of this phenomenon, as it channels multiple corporate activities that have made possible the transfer and secure reallocation of significant capital and equity flows.
During the presentation of the report, Domingo García Coto, Director of BME´s Research Department, stated that “there has been a transition from a financial system model in which bank intermediaries were the prevailing and almost the only source of financing to a model in which stock markets have gradually increased their weight to become key instruments in the financial system for their ability to channel investment flows to the economy and provide asset valuation at any time”.
In 1986, the market value of listed companies, or capitalisation, stood at €39 bn. This figure increased by 28 times in 2009 to €1.1 trillion in 2009, posting a cumulative average annual growth rate of 15.7%, double that of Spain´s GDP. As regards Equity trading volume, it increased exponentially, from €12.6 billion in 1986 to €897 billion in 2009.
The objective of the report is to review and analyse those market-based capital raising processes and to make it clear that for any company, listing on the stock exchange is a crucial decision and one that has a clear beneficiary: shareholders. Companies need equity to finance their investment processes and shareholders benefit from the liquidity, objective pricing, knowledge of latent capital gains and greater protection.
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Source: Bolsa de Madrid (BME)
European Equity Market Report-FESE
March 16, 2010--FESE has published the European Equity Market report - Year 2010 (updated with February figures)
view report
Source: FESE
First two months see 47.9 percent decline in budget deficit
March 16, 2010--Turkey’s budget deficit in the first two months of 2010 totaled $5.39 billion, a 47.9 percent decrease over the same months of 2009, Finance Ministry data have shown.
The budget deficit in January and February of 2009 totaled $10.35 billion.
According to Finance Ministry figures released on Tuesday, the state spent $2.27 billion more than it earned in January, while the budget deficit in the month of February reached $3.12 billion. Expenditures amounted to $44.93 billion while $39.54 billion entered the state coffers in the same period.
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Source: Todays Zaman
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.”
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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
