IN spagna non e' che se la passano tanto bene..sopratutto la disoccupazione e' salita tantissimo
FUND VIEW-Spain to feel more pain, says Schroders manager
* Spanish firms to suffer from recession and euro strength
* Likes telcos due to high dividends, underweight banks
* Likes French property website Seloger, Italy's Azimut
By Brian Gorman
LONDON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Spanish companies will suffer
further due to the recession and the strength of the euro, which
is a "one size fits none" currency, said the manager of a
Schroders fund that invests in the euro zone.
"
A couple of years ago, it was party time in Spain, but now
it has a hangover," Andy Lynch, who manages Schroders' Euro
Dynamic Growth Fund, told Reuters.
London-based Lynch has 10 percent of his fund in Spain,
compared with 14 percent for the benchmark, the MSCI EMU index.
He pointed to Spain's high unemployment, which at 17.9
percent is the highest in the EU, and said his exposure to
companies relying on consumer spending there was "non-existent".
"It's hard to see consumption being strong in that kind of
environment," he noted.
He said Spain needed the euro to be weaker, adding: "I don't
think the euro can work until we have fiscal union. But I'm not
forecasting that any time soon."
Launched in 2002, the fund is worth some 303 million euros
and is up 4.3 percent for the first half of the year, compared
with a rise of 2.8 percent for the MSCI EMU.
In terms of sectors,
Lynch is underweight on banks.
"We've seen a lot of writedowns on structured products, but
as we've seen from Lloyds <LLOY.L>, the losses on plain vanilla
lending are just getting going. Things like mortgages and car
loans -- when people can't service the loans any more, it's
classic late-cyclical, and it's lagged to rising unemployment."
HIGH QUALITY
Not surprisingly, he is underweight Spain's Banco Santander
<SAN.MC>. "The management team is exceptionally high quality,
but they're not going to be able to walk on water", he said,
forecasting "chunky losses" on its loan books in coming years.
However, banks which he regards as high quality such as
Societe Generale <SOGN.PA> and BNP Paribas <BNPP.PA> are both in
his Top 10 holdings.
Lynch admitted to being caught out by the rally in equity
markets, which has seen the FTSEurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> surge 46
percent from the lifetime low to which it sank on March 9.
"It's been a chastening run-up because I was cautiously
positioned," said Lynch. "July wasn't much fun. I got caught by
the direction of the market and by the lower quality of some of
the stocks that moved up."
But he said he had no plans to radically overhaul his
portfolio.
"I still feel that a lot of the growth is being fuelled by
government support packages. It's a bit like heroin. You keep
having to take more of it to get the same hit. There's a lack of
real end-demand."
Outside the big caps, he likes Italian asset manager Azimut
Holdings <AZMT.MI>, which he has held since it was floated in
2005. Another midcap he likes is Seloger <SLGC.PA>. "To all
intents and purposes, they are the French Rightmove <RMV.L> --
the 'go to' website for people who want to buy or rent
properties in France."
He is overweight in telecoms and has Spain's Telefonica
<TEF.MC> as his second-biggest holding.
Lynch pointed to telecoms' strong cashflow and dividend
yields, which he says are well covered, adding: "When you talk
to teenagers, they say there's absolutely no way they're giving
up their mobiles or facebook."
(Editing by David Holmes)
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commerzbank DE0008032053 31/12/2010 6,375% t.m. 1000e. 75-78,6 cos' è questa roba???
