Spain Business Brief - Wednesday November 5 2008
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By h.b. - Nov 5, 2008 - 1:55 PM
Spanair losses soar as owners SAS says the airline is for sale again.

Spanair has announced that its losses have multiplied seven fold following the tragic accident at Barajas Airport last August, and the start of the economic crisis with the high prices of fuel. The company, which is owned by the Scandinavian airline group, SAS, reported losses of 64 million € for the first nine months of the year.
SAS has again said it is looking at a possible sale or merger of the airline, looking for ‘diverse structural and alternative solutions’. The airline has already applied to lose 1,100 of its 3,800 workforce.

Some 50 agricultural labourers, from the SAT Andalucian Trade Union, have taken over the Sevilla headquarters of the Banco Santander today, in protest at the Government’s bail-out plans and help for the banking sector. The workers say the banks should be nationalised, and are also demanding a meeting with the President of the Junta de Andalucía, Manuel Chaves.
It comes as the Minister for the Economy, Pedro Solbes, has said that Spain has now spent all the margin she had to take action against the crisis. It seems the cupboard is now bare for Solbes, who has also described unemployment as the main problem now facing Spain.

New numbers from the National Statistics Institute, INE, show that women are earning on average 5,800 € less than men a year. The number compared to the average wage of 19,680 € in 2006 means that the fairer sex is paid 26.3% less.

A spate of profit-taking has taken place today on the markets in Europe following the news of the election of Barack Obama. However the Madrid IBEX 35, which had slipped 2% at the start of the day, recovered the amount later.

Power company Endesa has announced a tripling of its profits thanks to the sale of its shares in E.ON. The profit number for the year to September was 6.8 billion, 243% more than for the same period in 2007. Without the extraordinary items profits were still up 20.5% at 2.014 billion.

And finally,
The BBVA bank, the second largest in Spain, has said that it is the third bank to have the least bad debt, and considers that the times of crisis are ideal for it to capture clients from other banks, by offering better terms on mortgages and other items. The bank says it wants to capture 200,000 more accounts and 12,000 new mortgages over the next year.

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