Sabadell entrusts Goldman Sachs with the search for a buyer for the British TSB

Spanish bank Sabadell (MC: SABE ) has given Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS ) a mandate to sell TSB, its deficit UK business, two sources told Reuters on Friday with knowledge of the situation.

One of the sources said that the process was already underway and that the US investment bank, which had already been hired by Sabadell in July to explore various strategic options, is now in charge of the sale of TSB, acquired by the Spanish bank. in 2015.

The news comes after Sabadell and its rival BBVA (MC: BBVA ) announced on Friday that they were canceling their merger negotiations.

Sabadell said in its statement without going into detail that it will now analyze “strategic alternatives” for its international assets, including TSB.

Both Sabadell and Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

The first source did not provide further details or the planned divestment schedule for TSB.

A second source familiar with the situation said that, apart from a direct divestment, there were “more options” on the table, including a possible segregation of this business.

“Selling TSB will be complicated, as Sabadell could be perceived as a forced seller, and now Sabadell seems too small to compete in the retail sector with the main banks in Spain,” said Spanish investment firm Alantra after breaking up negotiations with the BBVA.

Like other Spanish banks, Sabadell ventured abroad to improve and diversify its income, but the TSB purchase was marred from the outset by the British bank’s significant technological problems.

Before entering formal merger negotiations with BBVA in November, Sabadell was working on an efficiency plan both in Spain, with the reduction of 1,800 jobs, and in TSB.

Sabadell expects TSB to reach profitability threshold in 2021 after losing 84 million euros in the third quarter.

The most relevant news announced by the General State Budget Project in terms of investment and savings is its intention to raise the personal income tax (IRPF) by two points for work income of more than 300,000 euros and in three points for capital income of more than 200,000 euros.

In addition, it includes a reduction in deductions for private pension plans (going from a maximum of 8,000 euros to another of 2,000 euros per year) and an increase of one point of wealth tax, up to 3.5%, if they are exceeded the 10 million euros.

Unless parliamentary procedures are greatly accelerated, none of these measures will come into force in 2020 —to do so they should be approved before December 31—, explains Luis del Amo, technical secretary of the REAF of the General Council of Economists.

Although, for the moment, he adds, the announced fiscal changes are nothing more than a declaration of intent, yes “they can be understood as an invitation to make early decisions in the financial-fiscal field, which is not always correct.”

For Paula Satrústegui, wealth planning partner of Abante Asesores, the fiscal modifications included in the Budgets have been waiting for a long time – even more burdensome than those now presented – and affect a very small part of the savers and investors (income from work of more than 300,000 euros or more than 200,000 euros in capital).

In his opinion, there are no particularly relevant reasons to consider a patrimonial reorganization solely for tax criteria. Before making a decision of this type, “it is convenient to contextualize: what income will be obtained in 2020/2021, what liquidity needs will be covered, what price level is, for example, required in the real estate market; what goods can or cannot be donated to the children, and so on ”.

With these qualifications made, both experts agree that whoever repeatedly exceeds (not this year exceptionally) the 300,000 euros of earned income should, if it is in their power, advance to 2020 the collection of any possible bonus / bonus. You will save about 200 euros in taxes for every 10,000 euros of additional income.

Luis del Amo says that one does not always sell, for example, a house when you want, but “when you can.” In his opinion, for those who have in their hand to make high capital gains (more than 200,000 euros) it will be better to do so in 2020 than in 2021 (as long as the prices are the same).

For the consolation of those who cannot advance capital gains, Paula Satrústegui clarifies with numbers that the fiscal impact of the announced new taxation of savings is not excessive. He gives the example of the sale of a home with a capital gain of 300,000 euros in 2020 or 2021.

The difference in taxes between the two years is exactly 3,000 euros (1% of profits). This is so because in the Budgets the tax rates on savings are kept between 19% and 23% up to 200,000 euros (so in this example, 100,000 euros are taxed at 26%).

Both experts are clear that the contributions to pension plans that investors make this year will basically depend on their ability to save and the confidence and profitability provided by the plans they already have subscribed.

It is true, says Luis del Amo, that if possible it is advisable, for purely fiscal reasons, to speed up the contributions as much as possible. “A tax relief is achieved that can be almost 50% of what was contributed, which is not negligible,” he adds.

On whether it is more or less correct, in view of the announced changes, to rescue the plans in 2020 or 2021, for Paula Satrústegui this is not the question.

For two reasons: the first, because other variables such as the volume of income for one year or another must always be taken into account, the possibility or not of deducting the contributions made before 2006, the liquidity needs …

The second, because there are not many people with pension plans with more than 300,000 euros accumulated who could be affected by the increase in personal income tax.

If a person donates, for example, a property to a child, the first must pay income tax for the capital gains achieved (difference between the price of the donation and the purchase price).

No one will initially pay personal income tax if the same delivery is made but taking advantage of the succession agreements, by resorting to the so-called “capital gain”.

The “heir” will only be taxed on the capital gains that he actually obtains when he sells the property, although these will be calculated taking as the acquisition price the value established in the succession agreement (the higher the value, the less profit on the sale on which to pay taxes).

Although it is true that the Tax Agency and the General Directorate of Taxes do not share this opinion, it is also true that there is sufficient jurisprudence against this interpretation, especially of the Superior Court of Justice of Galicia.

The point is that the taxation of these operations called “inheritance advances” may change shortly. Not from the hand of the Budgets, but from the Draft Law on Prevention and Fight Against Tax Fraud, which has just started its parliamentary process.

It states that the acquirer of an asset, either through a contract or inheritance agreement, “will be subrogated at the value and acquisition date that said asset had in the deceased, provided that it is transmitted before the death of the latter”.

Or what is the same, that when you decide to sell it (if the person who gave it is still alive), you will pay capital gains (predictably higher) for the difference between the purchase price of the person who transferred the property to you (not as up to now, the in the succession agreement) and its sale price.

The IBEX 35 returned to its pre-pandemic levels on Tuesday after the escalation in recent weeks

Advances in Covid vaccines are driving the recovery of the IBEX 35 . The Spanish selective revalued 23% in November and even registered the highest rise in a decade two weeks ago. This Tuesday, the index recovered 8,000 points, a barrier that it had not exceeded since last March.

The IBEX closed the session with a rise of 2.03% to 8,143.20 points, consolidating its levels prior to the collapse of the markets due to the pandemic, in mid-March.

In the previous session, the IBEX was left behind after the announcement of the efficacy of the Astrazeneca vaccine . The prospects for an increase in the European stimulus package – Spain will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the deal – ended up confirming the consolidation of the IBEX.

Among the values ​​that drove this consolidation , the performance of Telefónica stood out . The operator rose 8.80% to 3.58 euros per title thanks to a positive report by the Fitch agency.

A rebound after the punishment suffered this Monday, when it fell 4.15%, after the downgrading of its rating from S&P Global due to the impact of the coronavirus on its business. However, the agency changed its rating for the next two years towards a stable outlook.

“It stands out that in the period 2021-2022 the recovery of the Spanish company could generate stable and optimal levels, especially in the Spanish market,” IG Markets analysts point out in a comment.

Meliá continues its rally.The hotel company Meliá was another driving force behind the rise in IBEX, continuing the rally that started in the first session of the week. This Monday, the company’s prices rose by 5.89%, leading, together with IAG , the comeback in the tourism sector. A day later, their titles closed with an advance of 7.90% to 5.39 euros.

Stocks in the materials sector such as ArcelorMittal , which continues to rise due to the better prospects for steel, and Repsol , driven by its shift towards renewable projects, closed the largest increases in the IBEX with increases of 7.05% and 6.27% respectively .

Banks, for their part, also contributed to the boost in the index, with Santander , Sabadell and BBVA as the largest increases in the sector.

10,000 points at stake.Once the 8,000 point barrier has been exceeded, analysts already anticipate higher levels for the selective Spanish. “He has rebounded from life support, he looks good,” he pointed out from Scalping.es to Finanzas.com.

In this sense, the “first objective” after the rebound, set at 8,300 points, could take the index to 10,000 points, a level that has not been on the ground since last February.

They were lucky last Tuesday, to say the least. Engineers from the Emxys company had worked hard on the Ultraviolet and Visible Atmospheric Sounder (UVAS) project led by the Rocasolano Institute of Chemistry-Physics, which was going to send components into space to obtain information on atmospheric processes.

Their aircraft were to travel on the same flight that left French Guiana with the Spanish satellite SeoSat-Ingenio and that disappeared eight minutes after takeoff., ruining a decade of research and 200 million.

“Due to calendar issues, there was no time and our material remained on the ground,” explains Francisco García de Quirós, co-founder of the company together with José Antonio Carrasco. “It was a disgrace,” continues the telecommunications engineer and doctorate in space engineering from the University of Glasgow.

“As there are so few projects in Spain … launching a satellite is something unique , almost unique, it has been a shame.”

García de Quirós met Carrasco, a physicist from the University of Valencia and a doctorate in electronic engineering, at the Miguel Hernández University in Elche, where they both share work as teachers. With a career in the private sector behind them, in 2005 they decided to launch a spin-offto develop your industrial and entrepreneurial vision.

They thought it was a good idea to gain a foothold in sectors that needed highly reliable and precise electronic systems. “We founded the company with 3,000 euros and we were winning projects on issues related to our area of ​​knowledge”, Francisco reviews.

In its first decade of life, Emxys managed to participate in three space missions as a subcontractor. “There came a time when, based on reinvesting the income, we had a great experience in space projects. We have never had losses ”.

Until in 2017 they decided to overturn the company’s orientation because the world was changing : from an exclusive environment of competition between countries, the aerospace world had turned to the so-called NewSpace giving way to an emerging private industry whose path was cleared by SpaceX, the Tesla founder’s company.

“It was a paradigm shift, a completely new approach that grew an industrial fabric around completely private satellite launches, something that was unthinkable years ago.”

They delved into the business model of small satellites, the cubesats, and focused on products, such as the development of a satellite platform with optical communications that did not depend so much on national investment plans. “But the [profit] margins in this industry are getting smaller and smaller. If we wanted to jump to this model we needed help ”.

They opened a financing round two years ago, and thanks to the training they received at Wayra (from Telefónica) and Javier Navarro, their financial partner through Vinca Capital, they learned to communicate their project without sounding like Chinese. A couple of weeks ago they received an injection of two million from the Mundi Ventures fund and the CDTI through Innvierte.

“The new approach is a suitable bet for a company of our size”, reflects the co-founder, who sees an opportunity beyond the crisis at the moment. “It is good for us to take this baton now, with a size that allows us to modulate our infrastructure and adapt it to the real market demand.”

With around 400,000 euros in turnover and eight employees, they know that it is not easy to make their way from a country that invests little in innovation. “Europe has gotten used to being behind countries like the United States or China.

Here the industry is very mature, with a high level of state protection that allows it to preserve its structures even at the cost of efficiency ”, compared to the dynamism of other markets.

Emxys hopes to show that there is water in the desert. “Our immediate future is difficult to establish. We want to get into an optical communications segment, which has no clear competitors in Spain. We want to become a global satellite integrator manufacturer.

The market is gigantic, and we will be able to occupy a fraction in the next four or five years ”. And also show that two entrepreneurs over 40 can open a promising path in space.

The preliminary results presented by the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna on the effectiveness of their respective experimental vaccines against covid-19 have opened a hopeful horizon for the economic sectors most affected by the health crisis.

Bars, hotels and airlines, among other businesses , see the end of mobility restrictions and capacity limitations a little closer after many months of the pandemic.

A journey that happens, necessarily, because the clinical trials end successfully, the Spanish Medicines Agency (AEMPS) approves the antigens and there are enough doses to immunize a very relevant percentage of the population.

However, in this process towards the old normality prior to the coronavirus, the management of the companies may run into a stumbling block: the resistance of the workforce to be vaccinated . The scenario is not ruled out.

According to a survey published by EL PAÍS, one in three Spaniards is reluctant to inject antigens against Sars Cov-2, either because they prefer to wait for a certain time to pass (37%) or because they do not even consider doing so (13, 1%). In this context, the question of whether it is possible to impose immunization to preserve safety in the workplace is timely.

In the legislation, the only rule that explicitly refers to vaccination in the workplace is Royal Decree 664/1997, on the protection of workers against the risks related to exposure to biological agents.

In a brief mention, the decree establishes that when employees are exposed to a disease for which there are effective vaccines, “these must be made available to them.”

However, as Rosario Rodríguez, Garrigues associate lawyer, points out, “this regulation is strictly applied to a specific list of professions in the biosanitary sector, such as doctors, nurses and laboratory technicians, and always under the principle of voluntariness”.

In other words, the company has a duty to offer the treatment, but ultimately, it is the employee who decides whether to submit to it or not.

On the other hand, the Occupational Risk Prevention Law (LPRL) provides that companies, as ultimately responsible for ensuring the safety and hygiene of their employees at work, may schedule medical check-ups.

“These reviews will be mandatory when provided for by agreement, but will only serve to check the health status of the worker and, if necessary, terminate him,” says Félix Pinilla, coordinator of the UGT legal services.

It is obvious, therefore, that the current legal framework puts the right of the employee to decide on his body before the protection of the health of colleagues and clients. However, should this criterion be maintained in a pandemic context such as the current one?

The professor of Labor Law at the University of Valencia, Adrián Todolí, understands that yes, except in the “most extreme” cases where the covid represents a serious and imminent danger to the lives of third parties, as occurs in the residences of elderly or in health centers.

“Obviously, in these cases it would be legitimate to go a step beyond medical check-ups and demand vaccination,” says Todolí.

The jurist, however, clarifies that if there were a conflict (due to an employee’s refusal to inject himself) and this resulted in a disciplinary dismissal, the termination would probably end up being declared inadmissible “as there is no legal basis to justify the termination of the contract”.

Precisely, in order to compensate for the regulatory void, some specialists are betting on requesting forced vaccination before the courts in advance through the Organic Law of Special Public Health Measures, alleging reasons of urgency and necessity.

“If the judge accepts the petition, the worker has no choice but to inoculate himself to keep his job,” says Eduardo Gómez, a partner at Dentons. The lawyer points out, yes, that only businesses that have a strong health reason would have access to the judicial process. Or put another way, “simple economic or productive reasons cannot be alleged.”

Federico de Montalvo, president of the Bioethics Commission of Spain, adds that the voluntary regime on vaccinations also ceases to be applied if the Ministry of Health orders the administration of the drug to the whole of society or to certain workers based on the aforementioned public health law.

De Montalvo, an expert in constitutional law, is convinced that this would be the most appropriate way to tackle resistance in companies, since it would avoid “many legal and ethical dilemmas”.

An opinion shared by the labor worker Enrique Ceca, partner of the Ceca Magán law firm, who is committed to an immunization decree that allows companies to “proceed to the objective dismissal of those people who insist on disobeying due to supervening ineptitude.”

Both experts stress, however, that a coercive labor measure would be the last option and should be applied in a very restricted way, taking into account the rights at stake.

At the moment, the Government is not considering imposing the future inoculation against COVID either inside or outside the work centers because, according to the Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, this strategy has not yielded good results in other countries.

“We think that giving the citizens correct information and telling them the truth will be enough to achieve high vaccination rates,” he said this week in the Senate. Many companies keep their fingers crossed that this is the case.

The investment platform considers that the measures of regulators and supervisors put the value of the quality, safety and potential of crypto assets, as well as the protection of investors
etoro

eToro describes as positive and necessary the new measures adopted by global regulators and supervisors, in addition to those that are yet to come as Mica in Europe . The investment platform understands that this legislation protects the investor while crypto assets raise their visibility to the level of the rest of listed assets.

Such is the case as the new regulations of the British supervisor, the FCA , which ensures that excessive leverage is avoided and not allowed in assets that involve high volatility, such as bitcoin.

“EToro does not allow excessive leverage, so it was already seeking investor protection. Brokers have to avoid this type of option, ”said eToro spokesperson for Spain , Javier Molina .

With its 2018 guideline, the Spanish National Securities Market Commission ( CNMV ) seeks the fiscal security of operations and constant warning to the user of the complexity of certain financial products.

“All operators must comply with these types of obligations beyond taxation. But what is dangerous is not the product itself, but the users who operate with the product without the necessary knowledge ”, adds Molina.

eToro describes as positive and necessary the new measures adopted by global regulators and supervisors, in addition to those that are yet to come as Mica in Europe . The investment platform understands that this legislation protects the investor while crypto assets raise their visibility to the level of the rest of listed assets.

A definitive step towards maximum regulation, they point out from eToro, is the future European regulation, Mica. The purpose of Mica is the creation of a common European framework to prevent abuse in the operation of this asset class.

New thematic portfolio . eToro launches a new thematic wallet for the “new normal”.

Its name is RemoteWork CopyPortfolio and it is focused on companies that are at the center of the telecommuting boom

It is made up of 25 securities among which are known as Apple, Alphabet or Zoom and others focused on the business market that offer services that are vital for companies to cover teleworking.

Dani Brinker, head of investment portfolios at eToro pointed out that the advantages are “numerous” as these companies “will experience a permanent increase in the demand for their services, which in most cases should translate into higher profits.”

The founders of Mimetis Biomaterials joke that the field in which the company worksSuddenly, it worries those who do not know anything about this world: biomimetic synthetic bone regeneration.

Although in the end, fortunately, it is better understood. “Synthetic because the material that we graft onto the patient is not bone of animal origin; and biomimetics because, to produce this material, we replicate as much as possible the way bone is generated in nature ”, says Ana Chinea, biomedical engineer and CEO of the company.

Chinea joined in 2017 a project launched in 2013 by four researchers from the biomaterials area of ​​the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, among them the expert in bone regeneration María Pau, president of the company, and David Pastornino, who accompanies Chinea in the video call.

In 2015, the company launched its first product, calcium phosphate-based granules that, after being hydrated by the surgeon, are injected into the patient.

“It is a product that avoids the disadvantages linked to the use of human or animal bone, such as the eventual transmission of diseases, and that improves current synthetics”, Pastornino argues. Mimetis sells to the dental sector, which uses its product to regenerate the gum bone before performing implants , and to the orthopedic.

Its business model is based on closing contracts with distributors. “We do not have a direct sales force,” Chinea concedes, but that does not prevent 50% of their income from being obtained through their own channels, since part of the company’s 16 investors are also clients.

Although they sell more to surgeons in the dental sector, the higher volumes demanded by orthopedic professionals mean that these contracts represent most of the 120,000 euros that they billed in 2019. At the moment they lack profits.

Mimetis has nine employees and has its small factory in Cerdanyola del Vallès (Barcelona). They started the year by launching a second product on the market – customized solutions based on the patient’s medical image and printed in 3D – but the coronavirus has left them “almost without activity,” Chinea concedes.

“The sectors we work for went into shock and we were especially hit by not carrying out emergency interventions, since regeneration comes after a first stage of containment,” he explains.

The company has been financed thanks to 2.5 million public grants and one million private investment.

They are helped by resisting the loss of income by “an exclusive distribution agreement” signed with Nobel Biocare, one of the main distributors in the dental sector, explains Pastorino. Your next step is to reach a similar pre-agreement in the orthopedic market.

Social networks have already become a repository that stores how citizens are experiencing historical moments. In the case of the pandemic, they have served as an outlet for millions of users who have used them to share their concerns, concerns and discomfort in the face of such a dramatic and uncertain situation.

Based on this idea, several teams from MIT and Harvard University have analyzed the conversations that have been published during these months to find out how the mental health of users has been affected.

Their research, published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research , concludes that users make more references to their anxiety and talk more about suicide than before the coronavirus.

This conclusion also fits with the perception that psychologists have about the consultations that their patients have made so far this year.

Since the confinement began, the most common consultations that mental health professionals have are focused on anxiety, grief management and relationship problems.

“We have seen, above all, difficulties with grief, due to the death of relatives or acquaintances, loss of work and deep feelings of loneliness,” explains Martín Villanueva, co-founder of iFeel, one of the mobile applications that offer psychological help.

Given the recommendations to reduce social contact as much as possible, the use of these apps has skyrocketed. Since March, iFeel, with more than 300,000 users, has noticed an increase in queries of 203%, 90% of them from Spain.

These changes in the needs of patients have been noticed in the networks. Using machine learning techniques to analyze the content of more than 800,000 posts, Harvard researchers found changes in the tone and content of the language that citizens were using as the first wave of the pandemic progressed, from January to April.

Their analysis revealed several key changes in conversations about mental health: They found a general increase in references to anxiety and suicide.

“We discovered that threads related to suicide and loneliness emerged. The number of posts in these groups doubled during the pandemic compared to the same months last year, which is a great concern,” says Daniel Low, graduate student of the Harvard and MIT Speech and Hearing Technology and Bioscience Program and lead author of the study.

Although the authors clarify that they cannot point to the pandemic as the sole cause of the observed linguistic changes, they point out that there was a much more significant change during the period from January to April 2020 than in the same months of 2019 and 2018, ” indicating that the changes cannot be explained by normal annual trends. “

Using various types of natural language processing algorithms, the researchers measured the frequency of words associated with topics such as anxiety, death, isolation, and substance abuse, and grouped posts based on similarities in the language used.

They found that most users started talking about COVID-19 in March, but those who said they had health anxiety started much earlier, in January. As the pandemic progressed, the language used by all users began to look more alike.

The analysis also revealed the impact of the coronavirus on people who already suffered from some type of mental illness before the pandemic. The mental health groups most adversely affected at the beginning of the pandemic were those related to ADHD and eating disorders.

Researchers hypothesize that without their usual social support systems, due to quarantine, people with these disorders find it much more difficult to control their conditions. In those groups, the researchers found posts about hyperfocus on the news and relapse into anorexia-like behaviors, as other people were not monitoring meals.

The findings could help professionals, and even those responsible for different social networks, to better identify and help users who are suffering from some type of problem related to mental health, the researchers say.

“This type of analysis could help mental health care providers identify the segments of the population that are most vulnerable when something serious happens, like a pandemic or natural disaster,” says Low.