The Government President, Pedro Sánchez, spoke on Wednesday in his visit to the United States with 13 large US financial institutions - among them, the two largest banks in the country and the world's largest fund manager - about energy transition and digitization to get out of the crisis. They asked him for the labor reforms and the housing market that the PSOE is negotiating with his partner in the coalition government, we can.
The concern of institutional investors for reforms did not surprise the Sánchez team by surprise. "Of course they asked for the labor reform!", Said a president's advisor to be asked about the world. Other sources of Moncloa pointed out that the meeting was "very successful", although no measure or decision has not been made.
But the contrast on the topics raised by the executive head and Wall Street's concerns exposes the divergences in the assessment of the Spanish economic situation.
The president of the Government wants to promote the idea of Spain as a center of investment attraction. Thus, Sánchez remembered in the interview that he gave the news television network of Centroqiend MSNBC that "we are going to make our economy green, digitize it, to modernize our educational system and, therefore, we want to involve private investment."
On the ground, however, investors demand facts. Several of the financial institutions with which the president met not only for his portfolio investment - that is, in financial assets - but also direct - in companies - and in real estate.
It is not a banal concern. The Electric Car manufacturer Tesla has repeatedly shocked the German unions, so the thesis of Spain that the labor relations model will establish the labor reform will be similar to German does not sound good or on Wall Street, nor in Hollywood, nor in Silicon Valley, which are the three stops of the president's tour in the US.
The most obvious case is that of Blackrock, with which Founder, president and CEO, Larry Fink - very close to the Democratic Party - Pedro Sánchez maintained a solo encounter early in the afternoon.
BlackRock has a considerable real estate portfolio in Spain and, in a certain sense, is the owner of the IBEX-35. The companies of that index of the Spanish Stock Exchange in which BlackRock has a significant participation are Banco Santander (where is the first shareholder), Inditex, Telefónica, BBVA, CaixaBank, Banco Sabadell, ACS, Grifols, Colonial, Electric Network, and Enagas .
Fink also achieved that in 2020 the Federal Reserve awarded BlackRock a series of operations to maintain the liquidity of the US financial system in the worst moments of the COVID-19 crisis.
Another giant who met with Sánchez - and, on this occasion, one near the Republican Party - was Blackstone, one of the largest private equity funds and, also, an investor protruding by its immense real estate portfolio. Among those attending the meeting was also Wellington. A spokesman for that fund refused to comment on the meeting with Sánchez.
Lone Star Field, a Private Equity fund that handles, according to some estimates, a portfolio of 10,000 million dollars in real estate assets in Spain is also stored in the real estate.
Lone Star played an important role in the reorganization of the Spanish real estate sector in the euro crisis, when she also acquired from zero euros the second largest bank of Portugal, Holy Spirito, which was bankrupt. Lone Star is specialized in the acquisition of devalued assets.
Another relevant fund that participated in the meeting is L. Catterton Partners. Highlight L. Catterton, owned by French Bernald Arnault, the third richest man in the world, with an estimated heritage at 166,000 million dollars (140,000 million euros) by the Bloomberg news agency.
Precisely, Pedro Sánchez had lunch with the founder and owner of Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and former Democratic candidate for the presidency, Michael Bloomberg, whom a 60,000 million dollar patrimony is attributed.
Other financial institutions with which the Spanish president met are the Family Office - that is, the organization that manages the family assets of the billionaire and philanthropist George Soros, traditionally close to Social Democracy.
Date Of Update: 25 July 2021, 04:43
