The Details

Buried at the bottom of page 17 of Friday's Boletín Oficial del Estado publication of the new rules for the Spanish banking system we find an interesting one-off legislative trick meant to make life easier for many of the country's cajas in their drive for public respectability.

Under Spanish securities law, the accumulation of 30 percent of the shares of a listed company by any one shareholder forces that person or corporation to make a public offer for the remaining float. As of Friday, however, this requirement does not hold in the cases of shares acquired from financial institutions in the process of reorganization or those that have been assisted by the BdE's bailout fund, the FROB.

Seeing as Basel III accounting regulations are going to downgrade share holdings in the capital structure of banks, one can reasonably expect to see various financial institutions bring to market their very large participations in Spain's private sector. Aside from providing invaluable assistance to Florentino Pérez in his quest to take control of the management of energy giant Iberdrola, the change should be causing bottom fishers waiting for the bargains to surface to take pause. There will be bid from hyper-motivated parties previously excluded from the game in a lot of these cases.

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Told ya so

Just shy of two years ago, we took literary advantage of a high profile emission of unsecured debt by a very large privately held company to both recommend against investing in it and to quickly take a few gratuitous shots at the principals involved, certain supporters of the Partido Popular and an unsavoury Spanish archbishop. Among the various comments we received at the time stood out one from the pen a certain 'Anonymous'.

You are funny!!!
"offering to the public unsecured bonds" You mean secure bonds with a guarantee of 300 millon €.
"the disadvantages to this plan" You mean advantege because people don't loose there jobs and like Clesa in 3 months he's employed more people increased in 40%.
"the hysterical wing of the Partido Popular (which spends much of its time lamenting the arrival of democracy to Spain)" To say that you MUST be a SOCIALIST.
"their twelve children" You mean their thirteen children.
"Antonio María Ruoco Varela" You mean Antonio María Rouco Varela.
WHAT A REPORT.
- 10 POINTS-

Aside from belatedly thanking the reader for his or her assistance with both our arithmetic and our spelling, we would like to discretely enquire exactly how much of the 140 million euros raised over a series of such offers since then is actually registered in Anonymous' name - now that Nueva Rumasa has entered into the preliminary stages of the bankruptcy process.

Company president and family patriarch José María Ruiz Mateos, aside from continuing with his long history of blaming others for his commercial travails, managed to cite the Judaeo-Christian deity, God, minimally once as yesterday he spun his sad tale to the press.

Readers of Spanish might wish to avail themselves of the opportunity to receive an education in the art of executing the victim strategy by reading Mr. Ruiz's personal blog. Priceless.

For readers of English only, try this Google translate of the open letter he recently sent to the nation's press complaining of their recent treatment. The algo may get de la Vega's gender wrong, but the mind-boggling essentials survive intact. The Spanish original is here.

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Ambrose pulls the switch

Mr. Sánchez, who seems to have given up blogging since finding gainful employment, has kindly drawn our attention to a certain recent journalistic milestone. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has traded in his stripes for a brand new set of spots.

Published yesterday, his Telegraph article entitled Vibrant exports will save Spain, and perhaps the euro comes to this, given his personal history as a raving apocalyptical, rather unexpected conclusion:

But those who still thinks that Spain will trigger the break-up of the euro are barking up the wrong tree.

Although the piece emits that unmistakable aroma of interested parties talking their books (indicating itself that serious money found its way into Spain over the last few fearful months), readers of Ibex Salad who take the trouble to read it will not be entirely unfamiliar with some of his arguments.

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Godzilla

The editor of web publication Capital Madrid, Alberto Valverde, is mooting the possibility of a merger between Banco Financiero y de Ahorros - official name of the megafusion and conversion to a bank of Caja Madrid, Bancaja and several others - and no less than BBVA, all under the leadership of Rodrigo Rato. The resultant beast, were it to be born today, would sport 880 billion euros in assets.

For readers not able to read Spanish, the Google Translate version will prove less than helpful. But it is pretty funny.

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Extreme Bonding

Readers, when looking at today's Bloomberg chart, should keep in mind that the Spain 10-year opened on Tuesday yielding 5.4%. Current spread... bund... 184 bps.

Mr. Market seems for the moment to approve of the cajas' version of reality, among other things.





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