MADRID, 4 (EUROPA PRESS)
Non-resident investors and families jointly controlled two-thirds of Spanish stocks at the end of last year, according to data released Thursday by the Spanish Stock Exchanges and Markets (BME).
Concretely, international investors had 48.8% of national shares under their control at the end of 2021, 1.1 percentage points more than the previous year, with which they remain the first group to hold Spanish listed companies. Families, for their part, own 17.1%, the same percentage as the previous year.
Since the beginning of this century, international investors have increased their weight in the Spanish stock market by more than 14.5 percentage points.
BME explained that the greater internationalization of Spanish companies, especially listed companies, is one of the factors that explain this growth.
Moreover, non-resident investors show a clear preference for listed companies since, according to data published by the Bank of Spain, non-resident investors control barely 24% of unlisted companies.
Among international investors, institutional investors predominate: managers of investment and pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, venture capital or “private equity” funds or even investment banks and intermediaries holding investment portfolios. actions.
BME added that the strong presence of international investors and the importance of the stock market in providing efficient valuation of such assets and providing adequate liquidity “should be strong arguments against the Financial Transaction Tax (ITF)”.
“Al no ser un impuesto consensuado con la Unión Europea (UE), el mercado bursátil español y por ende la principal empresas españolas cotizadas están siendo unjustamente penalizadas como alternativa de inversion frente a otras empresas competidoras radicadas en otros mercados europeos o no”, indica The report.
The participation of families in listed Spanish companies remains stable at 17.1%, far from the historical maximum of 33.6% reached in 1999, with which the downward trend which is also recorded in the rest of Europe, where Retail investor participation has traditionally been lower than in Spain.
The increase in retail activity detected in the markets of the United States and, to a lesser extent, in Europe after the start of the pandemic did not continue in 2021, notes BME, mainly due to profits after the intense stock market rally.
The report adds that among the reasons for the decline in direct investment in equities by Spanish families are the inability of successive reforms of European financial and stock markets to integrate more investors, the almost total absence of a slice of detail during recent IPOs, the growing weight of investment funds in investors’ portfolios, the poor performance in recent years of sectors popular with traders such as banking or telecommunications and the growing interest of investors in crypto -assets.
On the other hand, non-financial corporations control 20.9% of Spanish listed companies, a tenth of a percentage point less than a year earlier, while collective investment undertakings, insurance companies and other non-banking financial institutions increased their weight to 7%, compared to the previous 6.4%.
Public administrations hold 2.7%, two tenths less, and banks and savings banks, 3.5%. This data represents a growth of eight tenths of a percentage point and implies the maximum since 2015.