International investors and families control two-thirds of Spanish shares, according to BME

MADRID, 4 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) -

Non-resident investors and families jointly controlled two-thirds of Spanish shares at the end of last year, according to data published by the Spanish Stock Exchanges and Markets (BME) on Thursday.

Specifically, 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 own listed companies. Spanish. Families, for their part, own 17.1%, the same percentage as in the previous year.

So far this century, international investors have increased their weight in the Spanish stock market by more than 14.5 percentage points.

BME has explained that the greater internationalization of Spanish companies, especially listed companies, is one of the factors that explains this growth.

In addition, non-resident investors show a clear preference for listed companies, since, according to data published by the Bank of Spain, non-resident investors barely control 24% of non-listed companies.

Among international investors, institutional investors predominate: investment and pension fund managers, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, venture capital funds or 'private equity' and even investment banks and intermediaries that hold stock portfolios.

BME added that the strong presence of international investors and the importance of the stock market in providing an efficient valuation for these holdings and providing adequate liquidity "should be strong arguments against the Financial Transactions Tax (ITF)".

"Since it is not a tax agreed upon with the European Union (EU), the Spanish stock market and therefore the main listed Spanish companies are being unfairly penalized as an investment alternative compared to other competing companies based in other European markets or not", indicates The report.

The participation of families in the Spanish listed companies remains stable at 17.1%, far from the historical maximum of 33.6% reached in 1999, with which the downward trend that is also registered in the rest of the Europe, where the participation of retail investors 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 profit-taking after the intense stock market recovery.

The report adds that among the reasons that explain the lower direct investment in shares by Spanish families are the inability of the successive reforms of the European financial and securities markets to incorporate more investors, the almost total absence of a retail tranche in recent IPOs, the growing weight of investment funds in investors' portfolios, the low performance in recent years of popular sectors for retailers such as banking or telecommunications and the growing interest of investors in crypto assets.

On the other hand, non-financial companies control 20.9% of Spanish listed companies, one tenth of a percentage point less than a year earlier, while collective investment institutions, insurance companies and other non-bank financial institutions increase their weight to 7 %, compared to the previous 6.4%.

Public administrations own 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.