Salient to Investors:
Jim O’Neill writes:
- The rising success of German soccer clubs seems to say something about backbone and deep strength. Germany’s economic resilience owes much to the diffusion of its strength across a strikingly diverse range of big cities, uncommon in the rest of Europe.
- German soccer clubs have to be majority-owned by Germans, and operate under tight restrictions on the use of debt for acquisitions, and by global industry standards, wages consume a small share of revenues.
- Spanish banks have stopped doling out cash so readily to Spain’s soccer clubs, indicating the seriousness of the euro crisis.
- English soccer’s stunning revenues disappear into outlandish pay for too many ordinary players. The percentage of revenue spent on wages is far higher in the English Premiership than in Germany’s Bundesliga.
- Gary Lineker once defined soccer as a simple game in which 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end the Germans win. Is European monetary union a currency system in which 17 countries strive to stay competitive and at the end the Germans win?
- The German economy has been faltering of late as exports to struggling neighbors are depressed, China is slowing, and domestic demand weaker than it might be.
Read the full article at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-23/at-last-germany-secures-total-dominance-of-europe.html
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