The securities unit of London-based Barclays PLC told analysts yesterday not to use the acronym for Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain in notes to clients, according to a memo obtained by reporters. The mandate from Valerie Monchi was sent to research staff.
The PIIGS nickname has grown increasingly popular in the last month as investors dumped assets in the euro zone’s smaller economies on concern the countries will struggle to control budget deficits. Stocks in Spain and Portugal slumped the most since 2008 yesterday, while yields on Greece’s 10-year bonds and Portugal’s two-year securities have jumped to the highest levels against German bunds since the late 1990s.
“By denigrating a nation in the process of trying to describe a financial situation, it sort of puts the people in that country behind the eight ball,” said Peter Sorrentino, a senior money manager at Cincinnati-based Huntington Asset Advisors who is visiting Italy in March.
His firm oversees US$12.8 billion.
“It serves no one’s interest. We’re all in the same boat together,” Sorrentino said.
Investment banks from Citigroup Inc to JPMorgan Chase & Co, both based in New York, have used the term in research reports. There were no instances of it in Barclays notes obtained by reporters.
“The PIIGS remain front-and-center,” analysts led by Adam Crisafulli of JPMorgan in New York wrote in a report yesterday.
CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets analyst Christopher Wood recommended a “PIIGS widening spread trade” in a report last June.
Mark Lane, a spokesman for Barclays in New York, declined to comment. So did Duncan Smith of Citigroup and Brian Marchiony of JPMorgan.
Portugal’s public debt will rise to 91 percent of GDP by next year from 77 percent last year, European Commission forecasts showed. More than one in three Italian households that got a mortgage to buy a residential property is struggling to meet the loan repayments, a study from Bologna-based research center Nomisma showed yesterday.
Ireland’s economy shrank 7.5 percent last year and the government is cutting spending to reduce a deficit that widened to 11.7 percent of GDP last year, almost four times the EU limit.
Greece’s debt will increase to 135 percent of GDP, from 113 percent, and Spain’s will climb to 74 percent from 54 percent, the European Commission estimates. Greece faces opposition to proposed deficit cuts, with its biggest union set to approve a mass strike, the second scheduled for this month.
Usage of PIIGS grew following the rise of the BRICs acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China, coined by Goldman Sachs Group Inc chief global economist Jim O’Neill to describe four of the world’s biggest emerging markets.
The Web site of the Humane Society of the United States describes pigs as “highly intelligent, curious animals who engage in complex tasks and form elaborate social groups.”
Wikipedia says they eat any food, including worms and tree bark.
“If there’s a cute nickname to use so you don’t have to say five names out loud over and over again, that’s fine with me,” said Julius Ridgway, a financial adviser at Medley & Brown LLC, which oversees about US$400 million in Jackson, Mississippi. “It’s just silly.”
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS