Grupo Godo has reached an agreement with a selection of reputable companies to provide quality information to its audience. This new group called FORO EMPRESARIAL is composed of CLOSA (as financial advisor), AXIS CORPORATE (business consultancy), BBVA (for funding), ILV SILVER (integral support transactions), VIALEGIS (legal and tax advice) and WOLTERS KLUWER (information and software services). It is issued quarterly as a separate print of La Vanguardia´s Saturday´s issues, the first number dealt with company size and the second one on the process of transformation.

The Bank of Spain has published recently its annual report depicting what we can call the 50 shades of the Spanish economy.
Starting with the evolution of the domestic demand  to be the engine driving GDP growth in 2014 and 2015, with an emphasize on the domestic consumption´s role. This rebound in consumption is tailored towards durable goods, for which the Spaniards have postponed purchasing during the financial crisis (such as changing TV, fridge…).

However, this rebound in consumption is still higher than the growth in real wages, which could indicate that the actual growth in GDP is due to a momentary effort in household consumption. Today, the wages are far from what they were before the crisis keeping in mind that the inflation is negative.

In terms of GDP, foreign demand has been falling in 2014 and 2015, while the last time we saw a fall in foreign demand was in 2007 which could be alarming. Spain seems to be performing better, but if the major economies are not doing well, this can have a contagious effect on Spain sooner or later.

Looking at gross wealth, today it is still far from 2008 levels. The main investment of Spaniards is real estate but it is still far from recovering from the golden years levels reached in full bubble.

When it comes to debt, the national debt has already exceeded 100% of GDP and the EU average despite having been well below the level of debt of the Eurozone. Warnings were in place several years ago while some claimed that Spain was solvent due to its low level of debt.

Just Eat Plc (LSE: JE.), the world´s leading digital marketplace for takeaway food delivery announced in February 2016 that it has agreed on acquiring four businesses from competitors Rocket Internet and Foodpanda for an aggregate of €125Million to be funded from existing cash resources.

The target businesses are online takeaway food companies residing in Spain (La Nevera Roja), Italy (PizzaBo/ hellofood Italy), Mexico (hellofood Mexico) and Brazil (hellofood Brazil). The new acquisition is regarded as highly complementary to Just Eat´s existing portfolio and thus is in line with its strategic growth plan to become the market leader in the geographical environment in which it operates. Studies have estimated that the takeaway food delivery in these targeted territories is worth over € 9.9 billion.

Previous operations in this market, such as the successful consolidation in 2014 of Just Eat in Brazil, demonstrates the effectiveness of M&A transactions in this sector. Through their joint venture with Movile and iFood, they became market leaders in Brazil and processed more than 1.1 million orders in December 2015, a 150% increase year-on-year according to company sources. The benefits include enlarged business volume and scale, with a bigger customer base that would enjoy a larger choice of restaurants, as well as economical synergies established with time that would in turn lead to increased sustainable margins. Just Eat expects the acquisition, in net terms, to adjust 2016 EPS and to add € 6.18 million to 2017 EBITDA.

The other side of the story shows that a trend of divestments has been taking place in the industry: Rocket Internet has sold quickly La Nevera Roja when it had acquired it only one year ago for € 80 million, Just Eat´s CEO David Buttress also sold 60% of his shares in March 2016, so as the finance director Mike Wroe who decreased his ownership by 55%. What seems to be behind the selling trend is mainly the business model of the companies: these start-ups, by providing the independent restaurants a web and online platform to manage their fleet of delivery people, are in fact being related in consumers ‘minds to the quality of food delivered which is mostly low-end fast food. As they don´t handle the food at any point, they charge a low fee of around 10-15% of the order price, and since they are limited in their food choice and price, they cannot optimize the speed and quality of delivery.

U.S. Venture Capital firms have raised $12.0Billion for 57 funds during the first quarter of 2016 translating into a 59% increase in dollar terms from last year´s first quarter and a 17% decrease in terms of the number of funds raised, according to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). This quarter investments has marked the best start to a year since the dot-com boom in 2001 and the strongest quarter since the 2^nd quarter of 2006 when 79 funds raised $14.3Billion.

What is worth reflecting on is that the market considered 2015 to be the worst year for Tech IPOs since 2009: just 28 companies entered the U.S. public markets according to Dealogic compared to 62 in 2014 and 48 in 2013, 131 unicorns (companies valued at $1Billion or more by Venture Capitalists such as Uber, Xiaomi and Airbnb) opted to remain private for a longer period and half of the tech companies that went public have traded at below their IPO price.

Regardless, this data is surely good news for the Venture Capital industry that managed to gather the most money in a decade, money which will eventually need to get invested into American entrepreneurs businesses thus encouraging innovation.

Lyft, the American transportation network company that facilitates peer-to-peer ridesharing, completed a $1Billion financing round, seizing the largest deal of the quarter. Following, is the 3D computer-generated virtual reality start-up Magic Leap that raised $794Billion, and rounding the top 5 are Sunnova Enegry, Uber and Flatiron Health. The top 10 companies have raised 25% of total funds.

In terms of sectors, the most attractive was Software which gathered $5.1Billion, Biotechnology raised $1.8Billion whereas Media and Entertainment came in 3^rd place with $930Million. More experienced start-ups were more successful in gaining more flows while early stage investments decreased by 18% in volume compared to the previous quarter.