YPF-smoke screen for Argentina’s bad economy?
The YPF story is receiving a lot of attention in Spain. Argentina is accused of stealing assets in order to hide the Argentinian bad economy. Let’s see how this plays out. Wonder what people would say if Spain “seized” peoples euros and gave them new pesetas instead? From El Pais.
Repsol on Tuesday accused the government of Argentinean President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of seizing control of its YPF unit in order to distract public attention from the Latin American country’s social and economic crisis.
At a news conference, Repsol chairman Antonio Brufau confirmed the leading Spanish oil firm would seek redress with the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes. Speaking in Mexico, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy expressed his “profound discontent” at the move, while his government, which has the backing of the European Union in the dispute, warned of reprisals.
YPF and Government hostile take overs
As they say, when it rains….Spain doesn’t need this, but such is life. Argentina is just only taking what belongs to the country, or? What’s next, governments taking your gold and giving you freshly printed pesetas for it? From El Pais on the latest out of Argentina.
After weeks of speculation, Argentinean President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced on Monday that her government is going to nationalize the Spanish Repsol subsidiary YPF, declaring that her country’s hydrocarbon industry was a sector of “public interest.”
In a speech made in Buenos Aires after returning from the Americas Summit in Colombia, Fernández de Kirchner explained that she will send a law to Congress that proposed giving 51 percent control of YPF to the federal government and the remaining 49 percent to the country’s provinces.
In the coming days, the country’s appraisers will decide how much it will reimburse YPF for its shares.
“When one makes decisions in the interests of national management […] one also expects that managers understand the interests of the state,” Fernández de Kirchner said.
“We are the only country in America and one of the few in the world that doesn’t manage its own natural resources, but there were stronger arguments in favor of us taking this decision,” she said.
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