Manuel López Torrents is an economics journalist with a long career. After more than 25 years in the profession, he has accumulated experience in media such as El Economista, El Boletín, Onda Cero, El Confidencial, Negocio, Vozpópuli, La Política on Line and now Estrategias de Inversión. He was the promoter of the Spain Investors Day event and has just published his second book with Planeta, through its Gestión 2000 imprint, entitled "The Future of Investment".From dotcoms to Bitcoin and meme stocks"based on the thinking of Juan Carlos Ureta.
Before we talk about other things, what is your book about?
It is a financial journey through the 21st century through a time line of relevant events that I have been rescuing and breaking down. It is very useful to remember them because, despite their enormous importance, many are forgotten or out of the public debate. This journey is obviously based on numerous reflections that Juan Carlos Ureta, founder and chairman of Renta 4, has been writing over the last 20 years in his letters to clients on the R4.com website. In addition to being a financier, Ureta is one of the country's leading economic and intellectual personalities. The book is written as a novel, in a relaxed and hopefully entertaining way, reproducing the most interesting ideas of Juan Carlos Ureta's writings. It is suitable for all audiences, it is not a dense manual. Ureta himself preferred that a thousand times more than a compilation of articles.
What conclusions does it draw?
Well, perhaps it stems from the surprise, on my part, to learn that central banks have been buying 100% of the public debt of the major nations, including Spain, for years. We are in a kind of financial matrix, of printed money, negative rates and zero growth, from which it is not clear how we are going to get out. Temporarily, the first milestone is the flotation of Inditex, although it is one of the few Spanish items that appears. It is a work in an international key. And I won't go on, because I invite you to read it. But it tries to rescue very important elements that, surprisingly, are outside the relevant debate tables, although it is impossible for them to remain so for much longer.
How have you seen the Spanish economy from your position as an economic journalist over the years?
I consider myself a professional child of the privatisations of the 1990s. When I left university in the mid-1990s, journalism was "the factory of the unemployed". To my surprise, a friend who a few weeks earlier had joined El Economista as an intern, to the great envy of the others in the group, called us with "they need more people here". I didn't think twice. I joined as an intern, and I got paid. Within a year I was a permanent employee, earning twice as much... The stock market was rising, public companies kept coming onto the market, the economy was growing, new technologies and new media were appearing, offers were coming in from all over... It was a great time, which was not spoilt too much by the dotcom crash, which in Spain was covered without any problems with the construction industry. I still wonder what would have happened if the PP had remained in power after 11-M: would it have been able to avoid the Lehman crisis? Pizarro says yes, and at least he warned about it, while ZP's PSOE denied it until the end, claiming that we were shielded. Then, it blamed him for all the ills.
And then comes the post-Lehman world, which we are still suffering from, even though this is now the Covid world. But we are still post-Lehman: money printing, all-powerful central banks, elephantine debts, communism (which is the reality hidden by the euphemism "populism"), questioned or discredited institutions (there is Brexit in the EU), lack of real growth... Nobody seems to have a way out. Things are looking bad, with the conflict with Russia, which was what was missing. But, apart from the looming systemic struggle, of which few people are aware, the truth is that the economies are smaller than in 2008 and here we must point the finger at politicians and managers of large corporations, who have only been able to raise taxes, reduce the perimeter of their companies (i.e.: lay off and sell off), without really pulling the cart before the horse. Not a single reform aimed at growth. The loser: the citizen. Above all, the middle-class wage-earner, not forgetting the self-employed. And the SME.
How do you see Spanish business now?
In the first place, fried with taxes and obstacles. I don't understand how any government, whatever its party, the first time it sees in the salmon press that a certain Ibex firm is laying off x thousands of employees, doesn't call an emergency meeting of all of them and ask them: "What do you need to stop laying off? That's the first thing I would do if I were president, as Tola's programme said. I would offer them facilities to maintain their workforces, and incentives not only for hiring, but also for increasing spending on suppliers, which is extremely important for the circularity of income. That would be a good vector. The Ibex, together with its suppliers, are more than 20% of the economy. If that pulls, the rest will also follow.
But it is not only the fault of the public sector. From the private sector, I have long detected a serious problem: governance. The alleged good practices to avoid corruption and waste lead to the perpetuation of a closed elite. If a small company has a good project or an innovative idea and approaches an Ibex or large corporation, it is most likely that the head of the section to whom the novelty has been presented will not even consider it. What for? If it involves the slightest disbursement, it will have to be raised, it will go to some remuneration and appointments committee and there will be several members; some of them independent, who will have no idea of the day-to-day running of the company. Whatever they say. And that, to sign off on any expenses, they will want a slate of three candidates, with an external advisor they know to bless them. There is the "scepticism criterion" in the codes of good governance. It is impossible. As I have been told many times, middle managers don't show their faces when it comes to raising new developments because the committees don't show their faces when it comes to signing up. It is the same in human resources, a department that in my opinion has an exaggerated power. I know of dozens of cases (some of them very well known) in which a departmental technician wants to sign someone who knows about the market, but HR knocks him down with a simple "he doesn't fit in with the company's philosophy". In other words, "the decision is mine, not yours". But, while the technician values the candidate's professional career because he has tested it for many years, HR is only able to value the candidate's academic record, languages...
So the Remuneration and Appointments or HR Committees do not work?
Like everything else, there are a thousand nuances and exceptions, but if you demand a binary answer, I would say yes: they are not operational. They prevent the circularity of income. They made sense at the time, to correct the excesses of the past; I'm not saying they didn't, but now the way companies operate is desperate. It perpetuates what has always been the case; the familiar. It gives no scope for others. Spain needs a structural change. Almost the entire Ibex is the same as it was 15 years ago. No wonder it is the worst market in Europe.
Who are your favourite entrepreneurs or executives?
On the one hand, Amancio Ortega. It is impossible not to talk about him. He is an ordinary Spaniard who conceived a company that would sell clothes in the style of the international fashion catwalks, at low prices. That would spread all over the world. That would have its logistics centre in Galicia. And he has managed to find an online model, something that very few can say. Pablo Isla, of course. Another crack, although he is an executive rather than a businessman. Juan Roig, although Mercadona has some things that I think he should polish up. There are more, of course, but I have a soft spot for the last stockbrokers who, shortly after being approved, had the status quo withdrawn with the new Stock Market Law. Far from protesting, they set up their own companies, which sized up the domestic capital markets, and ended up selling for a fortune to international banks. Even so, they continued on a successful trajectory, not retiring to count banknotes. I am referring to Pedro Guerrero and Ignacio Garralda, both at AB Asesores and later at Bankinter and Mutua. Manuel Pizarro, who also had to eat a full-blown political toad. FG, a man from Galicia who became the leading Spanish broker and later put Argentaria into orbit. Alierta, although he was not a broker at Cambio y Bolsa. And, of course, Juan Carlos Ureta, a person for whom I have enormous admiration.
I always say I wish they would put these guys in charge of the country. They would get the country out of the crisis in six months. And I don't care if they get this or that dead man out of the wardrobe. What they have done more than makes up for it. I think they are still one of the best there is in Spain, even though they are veterans. By the way, my previous book, From stock exchange to glorywas about these characters.