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BUSINESS EXTRA Top changes SANTANDER, which is cur rently renewing its top ex ecutives in Europe, an nounced the appointment of Pedro Castro e Almeida, until now chief executive of Santander Portugal, as its new Regional Head of Europe. He takes over on September 1 from Anto nio Simões, who is leaving the bank to join the British insurer Legal & General.
Football fund TWENTY topflight UK foot ball clubs were consulted over making permanent a funding package that was set up during the pandem ic. Sources revealed the government proposed to increase the existing £100m (€116.7m) allocation for grassroots, community and other football projects to £133m (€155.2m), subject to future increases in Pre mier League revenue.
22 - 28 June 2023
No good options to hand LEADING market analysts at CMC Markets hardly pre dicted a wave of cheerful news after UK inflation failed to fall as low as hoped. The latest Ofgem price cap changed little for house hold bills, they pointed out, but the end of the two gov ernment schemes helped to lower inflation. Experts at CMC, a leading global provider of online fi nancial trading and institu tional technology solutions, foresaw a further squeeze
Photo credit: CC/Colin Smith
FINANCE
UK REGULATOR: Tricky choices for Bank of England.
Zara soars high INDITEX shares have shot up since the textile giant, which owns Zara and other fashion labels, presented record quarter ly figures on June 7. The shares went above €34 for the first time in six years and now approach their alltime high of €34.85 in June 2017 On June 14 they stood at €34.21, an in crease of 7.5 per cent following Inditex’s
quarterly figures, giving the company a value of €106.6 billion. According to financial daily Cinco Dias, 65.7 per cent of investment and trading analysts recommend buying Inditex now. A further 28.6 per cent advised those who already had shares to hang on to them, while just 5.7 per cent said they should sell.
on consumers and a possi ble rise in the base rate. Nor did they rule out a re cession like Germany’s, with reduced household and business expenditure, re duced demand for debt, and a rise in unemploy ment. “We already know from the Kantar grocery numbers earlier that food inflation is slowing down. In May, it came in at 17.2 per cent, but the process looks in creasingly glacial,” said Michael Hewson, CMC Mar kets’ chief market analyst. “For now, the central bank is in the invidious posi tion of having no good op tions,” he declared. “Do nothing and inflation will take longer to work its way out of the system, squeezing consumers fur ther. Raise by 0.25 percent age points to show they are trying to do something,” Hewson said. “Or be more aggressive and push the economy into recession.”
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Riders law THE majority of Labour Min isters from the EU’s 27 mem ber states voted in favour of a directive setting out the working conditions for the food delivery and other rid ers employed by digital plat forms. Spain abstained, as Yolanda Diaz, who is also sec ond vicepresident, consid ered that the new measures were insufficient and were “difficult to understand in democratic terms.”
Export fiasco FIGURES from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) revealed that the UK’s goods and services ex ports had a value of $813 billion (€756 billion) in 2012 but rose only 6 per cent by 2021. Overall, the EU’s 27 member enjoyed a 29.1 per cent increase in the value of their exports during the same period.
