Financial Times (January 17)
Next week at Davos, “representatives of the Big Four accounting firms… are scheduled to meet Bank of America chief executive Brian Moynihan and other corporate leaders to thrash out green audit standards. Their decisions could be a crucial for the next wave of green reform as any eye-catching speech by Ms. Thunberg, since they will help direct capital flows.”
Tags: Big Four, BoA, Capital flows, Davos, Green audit standards, Leaders, Moynihan, Thunberg
The Economist (October 27)
“Blind adherence to ESG criteria… could skew capital flows towards the most privileged parts of the world. That would make it harder for poorer economies to escape poverty—a failure that could, in turn, inhibit their progress on green, governance and social-justice matters.” For this reason, Charlie Robertson and others are arguing that “ethical investors should instead adopt a kind of economic relativism, judging countries relative to their GDP per person.”
Tags: Capital flows, Economic relativism, Economies, ESG, GDP, Governance, Green, Poverty, Privileged, Robertson, Social justice
Institutional Investor (June 27)
“Further escalation between the U.S. and China could make U.S. Treasuries less dependable.” But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. “Every trade is financed…. Trade and capital flows are part and parcel of a complex system. Mess with trade flows and there will be ‘unintended’ impacts on capital flows. Equally, disturb capital flow and there will be an impact on trade flows.” As trade issues also flare up with NAFTA and Brexit, it’s “no wonder equity markets are volatile.”
Tags: Brexit, Capital flows, China, Equity markets, Escalation, Impacts, Nafta, Trade, Treasuries, U.S., Unintended, Volatile
Euromoney (June Issue)
In Asia, “regulatory co-ordination efforts are failing to keep pace with banking and capital flows, as there is no single authority to call…. Diverse markets, conflicting interests and failed policymaking add to the regulatory challenge.” APEC, the Asean Economic Community and the Chiang Mai Initiative aren’t meeting this challenge, leaving “Asian policymakers, supervisors and securities officials [to] coordinate policies and assess financial stability through a fragmented and ad-hoc series of talks and negotiating blocs that are not fit for purpose.”
Tags: Ad-hoc, APEC, Asean, Asia, Authority, Capital flows, Conflicting interests, Coordination, Diverse markets, Financial stability, Fragmented, Policies, Policymakers, Regulatory, Securities officials
