Los constructores prevén la destrucción de otros 2.000 empleos en su sector

La patronal afirma que la caída en la obra pública y la vivienda llevan "del hambre a la miseria"

F GUIJARRO. PALMA. El recorte que las Administraciones van a aplicar en la obra pública y el estancamiento que se mantiene en la edificación de viviendas van a provocar que durante el último tramo de este año y la primera parte de 2011 las constructoras isleñas vayan a pasar "del hambre a la miseria", con la desaparición de más de 2.000 empleos durante este periodo, según ha pronosticado el director de la patronal balear de este sector, Manuel Gómez.En concreto, desde esta organización empresarial se recuerda que en abril de 2007 trabajaban en la construcción balear más de 55.000 personas, cifra que en abril de este ejercicio había bajado ya hasta situarse ligeramente por encima de las 34.000. Las previsiones apuntan a que en abril del próximo año este colectivo se habrá situado por debajo de los 32.000 individuos.Igualmente, se reconoció que algunas empresas constructoras pueden ver agravados sus actuales problemas durante los próximos meses, lo que deja la puerta abierta a futuros expedientes de regulación de empleo o concursos de acreedores.Los datos facilitados por el propio Govern balear ya señalan que sus inversiones para 2011 podrían recortarse alrededor de un 35% respecto a las de este año, aunque se espera mantener el paquete previsto en inversiones estatutarias procedentes del Estado. Dentro del citado recorte, todo apunta a que la conselleria de Vivienda y el Ibavi estarán entre los departamentos más afectados.En opinión de Manuel Gómez, los resultados de la denominada Ley Carbonero, que permitió a la Comunitat Autònoma contar con nuevas reservas de suelo para la edificación de inmuebles protegidos, no se van a ver a lo largo de este año e incluso podrían ser mínimos de cara a 2011.Además, el director de la patronal isleña subraya que la construcción de vivienda libre se mantiene prácticamente paralizada, y también admitió sus serias dudas respecto al anunció de que el stock de inmuebles sin vender existente en el archipiélago pueda que dar prácticamente agotado a finales del próximo año y de que en esas fechas podría reactivarse la ejecución de nuevos proyectos.De este modo, los principales pilares sobre los que se sustenta la actividad constructora aparecen notablemente debilitados a la hora de afrontar los próximos meses.La única noticia positiva ha llegado de la mano del sector turístico mallorquín, ante el aumento en el número de proyectos tramitados ante el Colegio de Arquitectos durante los primeros ocho meses de este año respecto al mismo periodo de 2009.Manuel Gómez coincidió con hoteleros y arquitectos en que parte de este impulso viene de la mano de la nueva Ley Barcelo, que ha mejorado el anterior Decreto Nadal y que facilita la ejecución de reformas en los establecimientos de alojamiento.Pero la evolución de estos proyectos esta siendo negativa en Menorca y las Pitiüses respecto al pasado año, lo que limita el alcance de la mejoría anterior.Otro aspecto que se lamenta es que la adjudicación a grandes compañías nacionales de muchos proyectos públicos no está beneficiando a las constructoras isleñas, ya que en lugar de subcontratar parte de los trabajos con éstas se hace con empresas peninsulares, según se aseguró.

http://www.diariodemallorca.es/mallorca/2010/09/22/constructores-preven-destruccion-2000-empleos-sector/604907.html

La actividad hipotecaria cae por primera vez en la historia

En julio alcanzó los 1,093 millones de euros, un 0,32% menos que hace un año

EP El saldo total del crédito hipotecario de las entidades financieras alcanzó en julio los 1,093 billones de euros, lo que supone un descenso del 0,32% en tasa interanual y la primera caída desde que existen los registros de la Asociación Hipotecaria Española (AHE).

Este descenso contrasta con el incremento del 1,1% que experimentaba el saldo hipotecario en julio de 2009 respecto al mismo mes de 2008, pero sobre todo con las tasas de aumento interanuales de hasta el 20% que que llegó a experimentar en la fase más aguda del 'boom' inmobiliario.

La gerente de la AHE, Lorena Mullor, indicó a Europa Press que, aunque hay creditos nuevos, su volumen es inferior a las amortizaciones que se producen en los balances. Según la AHE, es poco probable que en 2010 el nivel de actividad crediticia arroje crecimientos significativos de los balances hipotecarios.

Por tipos de entidades financieras, las cajas de ahorros gestionaron en julio 600.487 millones, lo que significa un retroceso del 1,17% en tasa interanual, mientras que la cifra en el caso de los bancos se sitúa en 404.829 millones, lo que significa un crecimiento del 0,74% en relación al mismo mes de 2009.

Estas datos reflejan que aunque las cajas de ahorros aglutinan la mayor parte del saldo hipotecario, en estas entidades se ha reducido después de que hace un año se estancara (+0,2%) su evolución. En el caso de los bancos, hace un año el saldo hipotecario crecía a un ritmo del 2,3%.

El sector financiero en su conjunto cerró el mes de julio con un total de 2.562 millones de euros menos de saldo hipotecario respecto a junio (-0,23%) y de 6.316 millones en lo que va de año (-0,57%). No obstante, si se compara con el mes de julio de 2009, el saldo hipotecario menguó en 3.545 millones.

Por su parte, el saldo vivo total de los activos hipotecarios titulizados --conversión de los créditos en bonos para su posterior venta-- alcanzó en julio los 218.292 millones de euros, un 3,44% menos que en el mismo mes del ejercicio anterior.

Del total, 99.208 millones correspondieron a bancos (-5,89%), 93.546 millones a cajas de ahorro (+0,62%), mientras que el resto se reparte entre cooperativas de crédito, con 16.732 millones (-3,91%) y entidades financieras de crédito, con 8.807 (-14,34%).

http://www.diariodemallorca.es/economia/2010/09/21/actividad-hipotecaria-cae-primera-vez-historia/604550.html

Cort dóna llicència perquè el Gran Casino s’instal·li a Porto Pi

Aquesta sala de jocs, fins ara ubicada a Calvià, traslladarà l’activitat a Palma a principi de 2011. L’Ajuntament pot arribar a ingressar uns 360.000 € anuals

L'Ajuntament de Calvià ha perdut la batalla per impedir que el Gran Casino de Mallorca es traslladi a Palma. Després de gairebé un any de negociacions dels propietaris d'aquest establiment amb les administracions competents, la gerència d'Urbanisme de Cort va concedir ahir la llicència d'instal·lació d'activitat i permís d'obra per ubicar el Casino de Mallorca a la zona de Portopí. El trasllat del Gran Casino de Mallorca a Palma suposarà una font d'ingressos important per a l'Ajuntament, que rondarà al voltant de més de 360.000 euros anuals, tenint en compte la xifra que ingressava el Consistori calvianer per tenir aquesta activitat en el seu municipi, sense sumar-hi l'import corresponent a les taxes per tramitació de llicències. Els permisos donen llum verda a la família Salas-Salom, propietària d'aquest establiment d'oci, per realitzar les obres d'adaptació i d'instal·lació dels serveis propis d'un casino als locals dels multicines Porto Pi Centre i als de la immobiliària Vallehermoso, ubicats a prop dels cinemes.

El gerent d'Urbanisme de Cort, Bartomeu Tugores, indicà ahir que "la decisió és avalada pels informes favorables, perquè s'han complert tots els requisits que s'exigien". A més, disposa de l'autorització prèvia de la Conselleria d'Interior, competent en matèria de joc. No obstant això, l'obertura d'aquest establiment està subjecte a una resolució judicial. Les associacions del sector del joc a les Balears (Acomam, Asba, Aesbi y Sareiba) van presentar el mes de gener d'enguany a la Conselleria d'Interior i Justícia un recurs de reposició contra la resolució del trasllat del Casino de Mallorca. Tanmateix, segons Tugores, el permís és aplicable mentre no existeixi cap mesura cautelar que en suspengui el trasllat a Palma.

L'Executiu va aprovar l'expedient a final de 2009. La sol·licitud de llicència va entrar a Cort el març de 2010. Tanmateix, els informes tècnics municipals van denegar-ne el permís el mes de maig, perquè s'havien de solucionar deficiències relacionades amb la protecció contra incendis, aïllaments acústics i el sistema d'evacuació de fums, entre d'altres. El local suma una superfície útil de 2.677 metres quadrats, que permetran instal·lar-hi zones de joc, restauració i espectacles i una sala multiús. És previst que les obres, una vegada comencin, tinguin una durada d'uns sis mesos, per la qual cosa el Casino podria obrir portes a principi de 2011.

http://dbalears.cat/actualitat/Balears/cort-dona-llicencia-perque-el-gran-casino-s-instal-li-a-porto-pi.html

Los nuevos amarres de Port Adriano pueden llegar a superar los dos millones de euros

La ampliación de las instalaciones permitirá añadir 78 plazas náuticas a las 404 actuales, de las que ya se han vendido el 50%

M. CAÑELLAS. PALMA. El nuevo Port Adriano inicia su andadura. El estreno del dique ha aumentado el volumen de embarcaciones este verano y ya se han vendido el 50% de los amarres disponibles. Sus precios oscilan entre los 2,2 millones de euros por una plaza de 30 metros hasta los 36.000 para un barco de seis. Las tarifas dependen de muchos factores y no responden a un criterio proporcional, aunque los hay para todos los gustos y bolsillos.
El pasado mes de junio, Ocibar, empresa gestora del puerto, concluyó las obras del imponente pantalán. Su construcción no ha dejado indiferente a nadie. Ni a ecologistas, que reiteran su indignación, ni a vecinos, ni a los nuevos huéspedes.
La zona de amarres construida da cabida a más de 30 embarcaciones de 25 a 60 metros de eslora. A estos se suman los habilitados en el dique anexo a la playa, para navíos de 20 metros, con un total de 18 plazas. Se ofertan también en régimen alquiler, y se gestionan por concesión.
Toda vez que la zona portuaria esté concluida, el número de amarres pasará de 404 a 482. La ampliación no sólo afecta al cupo de plazas sino también a su envergadura. Al viejo Port Adriano únicamente atracaban embarcaciones de hasta 18 metros, dimensiones que ahora casi se cuadruplican. Será el único de Balears, sin contar el Club de Mar, que dará cabida a las gigantescas embarcaciones de 60 metros.
En estos momentos se está trabajando en el varadero, que prevé trasladarse a un espacio cercano. En octubre procederán a la demolición del actual. El "mercado será desmontable para ganar en funcionalidad y polivalencia. En él se podrán organizar diversos eventos", detalla la directora del puerto, Isabel Teruel. Los operarios también están dando los últimos retoques al nuevo dique. Se están colocando las barreras de los almacenes y las farolas, a modo de lámparas, ya tienen el visto bueno.
Teruel estima que la zona central, la más espectacular, correspondiente al área comercial estará en funcionamiento en la primavera de 2011. En este enclave se están llevando a cabo las obras de micropilotaje que sustentarán toda la estructura, incluido el aparcamiento subterráneo. El proyecto ha sufrido cierto retraso a raíz de las modificaciones que se han ido realizando para perfeccionar el proyecto, aclara Teruel. La concesionaria espera sin embargo que el puerto esté al 100% el próximo verano.

http://www.diariodemallorca.es/part-forana/2010/09/19/nuevos-amarres-port-adriano-llegar-superar-millones-euros/604212.html

Chinese Investors Flock to London to Buy Real Estate

By JULIA WERDIGIER and BETTINA WASSENER

Published: September 17, 2010

LONDON — Naomi Minegishi, 21, a Japanese woman who lived in China for 10 years, recently took a job with the London property broker Felicity J Lord.

Ms. Minegishi was hired not for her experience in real estate sales — she is studying management at a London university — but for her language ability. She is fluent in Mandarin, an increasingly valuable skill in London’s residential real estate market.

With her help, the agency recently sold four three-bedroom apartments in a new development for £320,000, about $500,000, each to a different Chinese buyer and solely on the basis of photos and floor plans. The new construction is close to the Olympic stadium, and the investors are betting that real estate prices will rise before the Games in 2012.

Chinese clients are a dream, Ms. Minegishi said. “They are wealthy, they pay in cash, and they’re looking for good value.”

Chinese citizens require approval from their local authorities to invest more than the equivalent of $50,000 a year overseas. But many wealthy Chinese elude the restrictions with help from trust funds and foreign bank accounts, real estate brokers say.

The London property market might have shown signs of cooling recently, but investors from mainland China and Hong Kong are busier than ever — bidding, for example, on luxury apartments in the fashionable Knightsbridge district down the road from Harrods department store and on new homes near the Canary Wharf financial district.

In some parts of London, mainland Chinese investors have already replaced those from Russia and the Middle East as the busiest real estate buyers with deep pockets, looking for trophy assets and pushing up prices, some brokers say.

Buyers from mainland China are a tiny portion of purchasers of high-end real estate in London, accounting for 5 percent of all purchases by foreigners of London properties valued from £500,000 to £1 million this year. But they are a growing presence. They accounted for less than 1 percent of purchases in that price range last year, according to Savills, a real estate agency.

Europeans still make up the largest portion, Savills says, although it does not break down buyers by country.

Unlike clients from Russia and the Middle East, however, few Chinese buyers are looking for London apartments to live in themselves. A majority of them are seeking investments in a real estate market they perceive as more stable than their own and are planning to receive steady rental income for years, Ms. Minegishi said.

For wealthy Asians, fears that governments may impose more constraints on red-hot local property markets back home have made investments abroad more attractive.

Rapid economic growth and easy credit caused real estate prices in many parts of Asia to rise sharply late last year. In Hong Kong, for example, prices for luxury homes have jumped 45 percent since 2009, according to Savills.

Last month, to prevent prices from overheating, Singapore raised the down payment required for many home purchases. The step followed similar measures in mainland China and Hong Kong this year.

By contrast, prices dropped more than 10 percent across Britain after Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, although the prices of exclusive properties in London held up better than those in the rest of the country, buoyed by foreign buyers.

Prices of high-end London real estate rose 8.75 percent in 2009, compared with a drop of 2.25 percent in the southwest of Britain, Savills said.

Not surprisingly, the property industry in Britain is adapting to meet the Chinese demand. Brokers are hiring Mandarin speakers like Ms. Minegishi, as well as Cantonese speakers to cater to people from Hong Kong.

Savills organized a seminar in Shanghai in July to teach 100 clients how to buy real estate in London. A rival agency, Hamptons International, opened an office in Hong Kong with four employees about two months ago.

Some London developers, meanwhile, are omitting the number four in new buildings because it is considered unlucky in Chinese culture.

“Most developers in London are including China in their marketing efforts,” said Matthew Tack, a director at Hamptons in London. “They’d be silly not to.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/18/business/global/18chinareal.html?src=me&ref=business

E-commerce is becoming more social and more connected to the offline world

A valiant explorer of the commerce-technology frontier

THOSE who cherish privacy will recoil in horror, but for digital exhibitionists it is a dream. At Swipely, a web start-up, users can now publish their purchases. Whenever they swipe their credit or debit card (hence the service’s name), the transaction is listed on the site—to be discussed by other users. “Turn purchases into conversations” is the firm’s mantra.

Swipely is among the latest entrants in the growing field of social commerce. Firms in this market combine e-commerce with social networks and other online group activities. They aim to transform shopping both online and off. Angus Davis, Swipely’s boss, points out that the internet has already disrupted the content industry. Commerce will be next, he says.

The first generation of e-commerce sites, which hit the web in the late 1990s, were essentially digitised mail-order catalogues. Websites like Epinions collected user reviews and recommendations, but they did not sell anything—and many collapsed during the dotcom crash. Only Amazon brought together selling and social feedback, to great effect. By means of collective filtering, it made suggestions based on other buyers’ purchases.

The second generation of e-commerce firms is quite different. Few emerged from Silicon Valley. Indeed, they tend to have offline roots, and sometimes seek to drive customers to actual shops. Many make their money from flash sales—brief offers of steep discounts on products—that are advertised to registered members.

The pioneer of flash sales, Vente Privée, grew out of the French apparel industry (the name means “private sale”). Even today, its centre of gravity is offline, says Jacques-Antoine Granjon, Vente Privée’s boss, who founded the firm in 2001 along with seven partners. Hundreds of designers, photographers and hairstylists organise its online sales events. After a slow start, Vente Privée has been growing quickly. Its five local sites in Europe have more than 12m members and are expected to bring in about €800m ($1 billion) in revenues this year.

Vente Privée’s success has inspired others. The best known is Gilt Groupe, which emulates the sample sales of luxury retailers in New York, where it is based. Gilt is smaller than Vente Privée. It has only 2.5m members and expects to turn over between $400m and $500m in revenues this year. Gilt wants to become a platform for all sorts of social commerce, says Susan Lyne, its boss. It recently launched several local sites in America, offering “deals of the day”.

Gilt Groupe is straying into the territory of another clutch of city-based e-commerce sites, which facilitate collective buying. Every day these sites offer the service of a local business—a restaurant meal, a spa-treatment, the rental of an expensive car—at a discount of up to 90% (they generally keep half of the sale price). But a deal is struck only if a minimum number of members pounce. Buyers thus have an interest in spreading the word, which they do mostly on social networks.

Until they drop

Many such sites have sprung up. The most successful is Groupon (a combination of the words “group” and “coupon”, which buyers print out to pay for their service). Although the firm launched only in late 2008, it already operates some 230 local websites in 29 countries and boasts 15m subscribers. Flush with money from investors, it has embarked on a global land-grab, buying Groupon clones in other countries, such as Germany’s CityDeal.

Groupon is more about people than technology. It grew out of The Point, a Chicago-based website that offers tools to organise collective action. The firm employs a worldwide sales force of nearly 2,000 to identify interesting local merchants and 150 writers to describe the offers. It wants to be the company that finally allows small businesses to participate in e-commerce, explains Rob Solomon, its president.

Yet it may be a third generation of social-shopping sites that really deserves the label, says Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester Research. The latest batch of firms try to build their business on top of the “social graph”: the network of friends spun on social networks. They make use of virtual currencies and the growing popularity of smart-phones, which can track consumers’ location.

ModCloth, which sells clothing from independent designers, has an active forum on Facebook and lets customers vote on which products the site should stock. Lockerz, another upstart, pays members “pointz” if they watch videos with advertisements, invite friends and do things with them. They can then use this currency to obtain discounts. Similarly, Shopkick rewards consumers for offline activities such as visiting stores and scanning products with their smart-phones.

For the new generation of e-commerce firms, the offline world is as important as the online one. Swipely is a good example. By uploading transaction data, the start-up makes it easy for customers to tell their friends how they are spending their money in the real world, something they probably would not do if they had to type all the data in. At the same time, customers can keep those transactions secret that they do not want to share.

Will making shopping more social really disrupt commerce as much as Mr Davis expects? It is hard to predict whether the second and third generations of e-commerce sites will continue their rapid growth. Consumers may tire of flash sales, as they did of online auctions. Even collective buying may have its limits. One of Groupon’s biggest problems is that tens of thousands of local firms want to be featured, but each of its sites offers only one deal per day. The outfit has started to personalise some of its sites, meaning that different users will see different deals depending on things like age, sex and interests. But if personalisation goes too far, and users see only the sort of things they already knew they wanted, this kind of shopping could become less fun.

Whatever the fate of individual firms and sales models, e-commerce is bound to become more social, predicts Sonali de Rycker of Accel Partners, a venture-capital firm. Retailing has several persistent problems: the high cost of attracting visitors, the low probability that they become buyers and the difficulty of getting them to come back. Sociable e-commerce offers potential solutions to all of them. So expect your favourite site to add social features, whereas many of the pioneers will end up with arrows in their backs, as innovators often do.


http://www.m.economist.com/business_16994870.php

Shopaholics and shopaphobes

Retailing in Japan

Whatever it is, we want one

THE Japanese used to be to conspicuous consumption what the Chinese are to raw materials. When there was a fad in Tokyo for tiramisu in the early 1990s, the world market for mascarpone felt the strain—until a Japanese company invented a synthetic version. But those bubbly days are long gone. Two decades of economic stagnation have produced a generation in their 20s and 30s that Richard May, director of the Japan Consumer Marketing Research Institute, calls kenshohi—people who hate shopping (except on the internet and from thrift stores). But one mainstream firm has defied the trend. It is Yamada Denki, Japan’s largest consumer-electronics retailer.

Yamada Denki’s consolidated sales in the fiscal year ended in March reached ¥2 trillion ($24 billion), double their level of five years ago. It has been growing quickly (see chart). Pre-tax profits doubled over the same period to a record ¥102 billion. The firm’s market share is more than 25%, which makes it, as one analyst puts it, the Wal-Mart of home appliances in Japan. Some of its success last year was thanks to a temporary government stimulus programme, which gives people who buy low-energy appliances discounts on future purchases. Yet the firm’s growth since it was founded in 1973 is largely self-made. Yamada Denki has rewritten the rules of retailing in Japan. It has done so with a loyal following of foreign investors who have helped it more than Japan’s risk-averse banks. “We’ve always been evaluated better abroad than in Japan,” says Tadao Ichimiya, its president.

Unlike other parts of the Japanese economy, the electronics-goods market has consolidated, largely thanks to a war of attrition waged by Yamada Denki. Over the past decade it has forced many small retailers out of business, many of them linked to the legendary electronics brands like Panasonic and Sony that used to set their own prices. Yamada Denki built market share by creating box-like stores in provincial areas, ordering lots of stock at a good price, then selling it to customers who were rewarded with generous loyalty cards. The electronics manufacturers were unable to resist this process: their individual brands are so powerful, there is rarely a thought of consolidation. Yamada Denki and its handful of smaller rival chains were able to divide and rule.

The company discusses its relationship with electronics suppliers delicately. Because of its size, “we can now suggest that they have a more open discussion with us,” an executive gently puts it. In fact, analysts say, it has persuaded the suppliers to provide much of the labour in its stores at branded booths, which holds down sales costs. It also collects goods directly from them. Its power also enables it to convince manufacturers to dedicate certain production lines exclusively to making stock for Yamada Denki on good terms. According to Dairo Murata of JPMorgan, about 30% of its products now come from these dedicated lines.

Yamada Denki has bolstered sales in recent years by building stores in big cities called LABI (the brand name, mysteriously, stands for Life Ability Supply). But its market share is reaching saturation point, especially given Japan’s shrinking population. So it is turning to China, where it hopes to open five stores in 2012 and to achieve yearly sales of ¥20 billion to ¥30 billion per store, Mr Ichimiya says.

His optimism will be tested. Yamada Denki mostly has experience selling Japanese products. The Chinese will want more variety. It will face competition not only from Chinese retail rivals, but also from online portals and American firms like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. Mr Ichimiya shrugs off the risks. “The only barrier between us and China is the language,” he says, rather naively. But that is why the company is busily hiring Chinese staff as future managers—yet another big break from Japan’s insular corporate tradition.

Sep 9th 2010 | TOKYO From The Economist print edition



http://www.m.economist.com/business_16996843.php