Europe midday: Ibex underperforms amid political tensions in Catalonia
CaixaBank SA
€5.11
18:15 26/04/24
Europe's main stockmarkets are mostly higher with the notable exception of Spain's Ibex 35 following the violence-marred illegal referendum held in Catalonia at the weekend as the region's leaders chose the path of provocation even after the courts had ruled it was unconstitutional.
Banco de Sabadell
€1.69
18:15 26/04/24
IBEX 35
11,154.60
18:44 26/04/24
IBEX TOP DIVIDENDO
3,146.80
18:44 26/04/24
At noon, the benchmark Stoxx 600 was 0.29% or 1.14 points ahead to 389.30, alongside a rise of 0.33% or 41.90 points to 12,870.86 for the German Dax and an advance of 0.29% or 63.68 points in Italy's FTSE Mibtel.
In parallel, the Ibex 35 was down by 1.42% or 142.70 points to 10,238.80, with stock in Catalan lenders Banco Sabadell and Caixa Bank at the bottom of the pile.
Meanwhile, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Spanish Treasury note was near its highest level of the session, trading up by nine basis points to 1.70%.
Linked to the above, euro/dollar was 0.59% lower to 1.1742.
Over the weekend, the regional authorities in Catalonia pushed ahead with an illegal referendum on independence, which resulted in roughly 800 people having to seek medical assistance as Spanish police sought to close some polling centers before voting began.
About 2.0m Catalans cast their ballot in favour of independence, out of a total of 2.3m who voted and roughly 5.0m eligible voters.
As set out in their recently approved Law of Secession, according to Catalan officials a declaration of independence might be announced in coming days, even as the central government comes under pressure from some corners to suspend the region's autonomy and call fresh regional elections.
However, other voices in Madrid were calling for an attempt at dialogue.
Commenting on the implications of those events, Jim Reid at Deutsche Bank said: "While its hard to see what the immediate macro spill overs could be, its another example that politics is getting more extreme across the world. [...] Even in a year where the edge has been taken off populism by strong growth, we've still seen the establishment defeated in France, the AfD do better than expected in Germany, the meteoric rise of the hard left Jeremy Corbyn from the political ashes in the UK, the S5M still neck and neck in the Italian polls and now all the passions behind this vote in Spain.
"Extreme politics continues to bubble under the surface. Weaker economic times ahead might tip it back into the mainstream at some point."
On the economic front, IHS Markit's euro area factory sector purchasing managers' index was marked down from a preliminary reading of 58.2 to 58.1.
Separately, Eurostat reported that the rate of unemployment in the single currency bloc was unchanged in August from the month before, at 9.1% (consensus: 9.0%).
Deutsche Bank acquiesced to paying $190m in order to settle legal claims against it in the States for rigging foreign exchange market prices.
RTL Group was planning to keep its full-year dividend at €4 a share, Boersen-Zeitung reported.