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.
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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.”
A museum in southern French city Marseille is inviting visitors to discover Europe’s relationship to the naturist lifestyle by wandering its halls in the nude. “It’s not every day you get to walk around a museum naked,” said Julie Guegnolle, 38, who was celebrating her birthday at the “Naturist Paradises” exhibition in the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (Mucem). Once a month, visitors to Mucem can explore the history of naturism in Europe in only their shoes — a precaution not for modesty’s sake but simply to “avoid getting splinters,” said Eric Stefanut, head of French naturist organization
‘SON OF GOD’: Quiboloy was in 2021 indicted by US prosecutors for allegedly having sex with women and underage girls who faced threats of abuse and ‘damnation’ Hundreds of police officers backed by riot squads yesterday raided a vast religious compound in a southern Philippine city in search of a local preacher accused of sexual abuse and human trafficking, police officials said. A supporter of the group, called Kingdom of Jesus Christ, reportedly died due to a heart attack during the massive police raid that started at dawn in the group’s compound in Davao City, livestreamed online by a local TV network owned by the group, police said, adding that the death was not related to the police operations. Officers brought equipment that could detect people behind cement walls,
They are the most fervent musicians no one has ever heard. Performers at this year’s Air Guitar World Championships in Finland on Friday tuned up at the Olympics of air guitar for the 27th time, featuring dedicated competitors like “Shred Lasso” and “Guitarantula.” This year’s challenge began on Wednesday with Airientation in Oulu, nearly 540km north of Helsinki, and was headlined by a class open to veterans and new guitarists alike. The Dark Horses Qualifications followed on Thursday, culminating with the World Championships Final on Friday night with the crowning of Canada’s Zachary “Ichabod Fame” Knowles as the 2024 Air Guitar World
SOVEREIGNTY ‘VIOLATION’: China was possibly probing Japan’s air defense network, seeking to obtain intelligence and putting pressure on Tokyo, analysts said Japan yesterday criticized what it called the first confirmed incursion by a Chinese military aircraft into its airspace as a “serious violation” of its sovereignty, saying Beijing was becoming “increasingly active.” China’s growing economic and military clout in the Asia-Pacific region and its assertiveness in territorial disputes — mostly with the Philippines — has rattled the US and its allies, and Monday’s incident represents a further heightening of tensions. Japan, Washington’s closest ally in the region, said it scrambled fighter jets after the two-minute incursion from 11:29am on Monday by the Y-9 surveillance aircraft off the Danjo Islands in the East China