Business Roundup for Spain and the UK

Nice little earner SPAIN’S First and Second Division football clubs earned €4.349 billion during the 2022-2023 season.

This was 11 per cent more than the previous season, which was 6.4 per cent up on 2020-2019, a survey by DBK Sectors Analysis found.

Excluding players’ transfers, last season’s income of €3.985 million was 8.7 per cent more than in 2021-2022, with €3.644 billion from the First Division and €341 million from the Second.

Real Madrid and FC Barcelona accounted for 41.4 per cent of the revenue between them, four percentage points more than during the 2021-2022 season.

Real Madrid’s €843 million – 21.1 per cent of the total – not only outstripped other Spanish clubs last season but all European clubs, including Manchester City.  Barça contributed 20.2 per cent of the total with €806 million.

Revolution revelations REVOLUTION BARS shares were suspended on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) as the company tried to raise cash.

The chain, which runs more than 50 bars and clubs as well as 20 pubs across Britain, could close up to 25 per cent of its venues to prevent its collapse.

Revolution Bars lost £22.2 million (€25.9 million) in the year ending June 30, 2023, and its shares have dipped by nearly 70 per cent over the last six months.

Increased energy costs, the cost-of-living crisis and Generation Z’s lack of interest in alcohol were responsible for the company’s problems, insiders said.

First appearance MERGED Orange and MasMovil, now called MasOrange, hosted a meeting for 3,000 employees at the WiZink Centre in Madrid on April 2.

Another 2,000 staff members attended online as chief executive Meinrad Spender and chief financial officer Ludovic Pech outlined the new company’s future plans which include making a combined profit of €490 million within four years.

MasMovil would move from Madrid’s Alcobendas to the Orange  headquarters in Pozuelo’s Finca business estate, they said.

Spenger stressed that there were no plans for compulsory redundancies but added that the new telecommunications company might be offering early retirement and voluntary redundancy options.

Blown away MORE than £16 billion (€18.7 billion) could be squandered this decade because Scotland produces more wind power than it can send South.

Owing to regulatory and planning delays, there is insufficient infrastructure to transmit the renewable energy from Scotland, where most is produced, to England, where it is needed.

Windfarms are currently paid to switch off their turbines while gas-fired power stations in the South have to be paid extra to produce more electricity.  This cost more than £700 million (€817.3 million) in 2023 alone, the Carbon Tracker thinktank said.

Sevilla in Saudi AYESA recently won a €95 million contract to design 190 water distribution and wastewater treatment plants in Saudi Arabia.

The company’s Saudi deal with the National Water Company (NWC) will incorporate “innovative and sustainable technologies” for water treatment, as well as measures to reduce energy consumption.

The agreement with the Sevilla-based company is part of NWC’s commitment to spend approximately €200 billion on providing safe drinking water and effective sanitation for the entire country by 2030, explained Jose Ramon Delgado, Ayesa’s manager for Saudi Arabia.

No trains today ALSTOM’s Litchurch Lane plant in Derby, the UK’s largest rolling stock factory, is making plans to lay off hundreds of workers.

Its final production run has been completed and with no further government orders on the horizon, the management is launching a voluntary redundancy programme.

So far, however, Alstom has not mentioned closing the Derby site although this could be “inevitable” unless more orders materialise to cover the two empty years that the France-based company must fill until it starts building the HS2 trains.