Weekly roundup of news in Catalonia and Spain
By Catalonia on Dec 15, 2008 with Comments 0
What do you know, Barcelona FC – instead of them sticking in 50 goals on saturday night they could only manage 2 – and rather pathetic if I may say so. First one by Eto and the second one by cannavaro although Messi did his job.The funniest thing is that Real Madrid with “8 bajas” contained the mighty Barça for 82 minutes until disaster struck. Ah well never mind.
The poor people in Gavá who suffered the terrible gas explosion the other week are still not back at home and there are now 6 dead. Three or four others who are gravely ill in hospital are still hanging on. Let’s hope the death toll doesn’t rise.
News just in: Banco Santander SA, Spain’s largest bank, said clients had positions valued at 2.33 billion euros ($3.1 billion) invested with Bernard Madoff.
Santander’s Optimal Investment Services hedge fund unit placed the money with Madoff for him to manage through its Optimal Strategic U.S. Equity fund, the Santander, Spain-based lender said today in an e-mailed statement.
Madoff, 70, who had advised the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission how to regulate markets, was arrested Dec. 11 and charged with operating what he told his sons was a long-running Ponzi scheme in the New York-based firm’s business advising rich people, hedge funds and institutions.
“People are going to take it badly in the market,” said Alberto Espelosin, who helps manage the equivalent of $7.7 billion at Zaragoza, Spain-based Ibercaja Gestion in a phone interview. “It’s not Santander’s own money, and they’re not to blame, but of course it will be taken as something negative.”
Optimal Strategic is fund run by Optimal Multiadvisors Ireland Plc, an Irish arm of Optimal Investment Services, Santander’s hedge fund management arm. Of the 2.33 billion euros invested through Optimal Strategic, 2.01 billion euros belongs to institutional investors and international private banking customers, Santander said.
The remaining 320 million euros are investments by Spanish private banking clients and mostly relate to structured products partially indexed to the performance of Optimal Strategic, the bank said. Santander also had 17 million euros of its own funds invested through another fund, the lender said.
“Optimal will undertake the legal actions which may be needed to defend the interests of shareholders in the subfund,” Santander said in its statement.
Source: Bloomberg.Com
News from England – Woolworths or Woolies have gone. They had a fire sale the other day and took 25Million pounds in one day which is some kind of record I hear. They have around 850 stores around the UK and are on the lookout for buyers. Iceland, the frozen food people (not the country) are said to want around 50 stores. Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s are also interested in “taking a few off their hands”. This is quite sad really as Woolworths was one of those stores which always seemed to be there, through thick and thin. MFI have also gone the same way I am told.
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