Wall Street Journal (November 13)
“Foreclosures are surging in an opaque and risky corner of commercial real-estate finance, offering one of the starkest signs yet that turmoil in the property market is worsening.” Through just October, the Journal found notices for “mezzanine loans and other high-risk loans” had already more than doubled the number for all of 2022 and likely reached “the highest total ever for a single year, as higher interest rates and rising vacancies punish the property sector.”
Tags: Commercial, Finance, Foreclosures, Highest, Interest rates, Mezzanine loans, Property market, Real estate, Risky, Surging, Turmoil, Worsening
Wall Street Journal (October 2)
“Certain spending habits developed during the pandemic—increased purchasing for home improvements and workout equipment, for instance—have waned as part of an expected normalization postpandemic. Other shopping patterns from the last few years, meanwhile, are sticking. Still unknown is what the new normal in spending will look like, according to finance executives, analysts and economists.”
Tags: Analysts, Economists, Finance, Home improvements, New normal, Normalization, Pandemic, Postpandemic, Purchasing, Shopping patterns, Spending habits, Workout equipment
Investment & Pensions Europe (December 23)
“After seeming to hit a wall last week, negotiations” at COP15 ultimately “yielded an agreement on biodiversity – in a move that some hope will make it easier for the finance sector to address nature-related risks to their portfolios.” Similar to the breakthrough Paris Agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework “lays down a plan for dealing with the ecological crisis over coming years,” codifying a “commitment to ‘take action’ to conserve 30% of land, sea and freshwater sources by the end of the decade – known as the ‘30×30’ pledge.”
Tags: Biodiversity, Breakthrough, Commitment, COP15, Ecological crisis, Finance, Freshwater, Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, Land, Nature, Negotiations, Paris Agreement, Portfolios, Risks, Sea, Take action
Institutional Investor (August 29)
“Now that investors can get factor-based funds on the cheap, they’re pushing quants in new directions.” This presents new challenges. “One is a move away from a heavy reliance on decades of historical data and back tests to tying this in-depth research to the realities of the current economic and market environment.” Another challenge is “getting the right people” to do this. “Many quant managers historically hired people with expertise in data,” but “now it’s the background in economics and finance that’s become critical.”
Tags: Back tests, Challenges, Cheap, Data, Economic, Economics, Factor-based funds, Finance, Historical data, Investors, Managers, Market, Quants, Realities, Reliance, Research
Forbes (April 9)
“Watching Bill Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management hedge fund stumble triggers more traumatic memories than global finance veterans like to admit.” The parallels with “the 1998 blowup of Long-Term Capital Management and Hwang’s forced liquidation of more than $20 billion worth of stocks on March 26” are clear. “The underlying forces—heavily leveraged positions colliding with the hubristic belief that past crises can’t happen again—are essentially the same.”
Tags: 1998, Archegos, Blowup, Finance, Hedge-fund, Hubris, Hwang, Leveraged, Liquidation, LTCM, Stocks, Traumatic
Wall Street Journal (September 24)
“Finance chiefs and investors are trying to figure out how to account for coronavirus-related expenses as the pandemic transforms how companies operate in ways that may become a permanent cost of doing business.” The effects of COVID-19 are now expected to last for months, if not years, but “some companies continue to treat virus-related costs as special, one-time items, which can give the impression that a business’s costs are lower than they actually are,” boosting, for example, adjusted Ebitda. Some professionals believe it is now time for “treating these items as regular costs of doing business as they close the books for the third quarter and not adjust their non-GAAP earnings.”
Tags: Account, Adjusted Ebitda, Coronavirus-related expenses, COVID-19, Finance, Investors, Non-GAAP earnings, One-time items, Pandemic, Permanent cost, Q3
Responsible Investor (June 9)
“Only in finance can a product lose 24% of its value and be celebrated as success. Since traditional benchmarks have lost more than ESG funds since the beginning of the year, ESG is feted by some as a success, a ‘refuge’.” Kudos, however, are not in order. “The rude fact is that, on the whole, ESG risk management frameworks did not prepare us for the inevitability of the pandemic. They did not help investors and banks anticipate the crisis, nor how to navigate it. The pandemic is a failure of mainstream risk management frameworks. Sadly, it is also a failure of ESG risk management frameworks.”
Tags: Banks, Benchmarks, Crisis, ESG funds, Finance, Frameworks, Investors, Pandemic, Refuge, Risk management, Success, Value
BBC (February 21)
“Chinese President Xi Jinping last year officially opened a bridge connecting Hong Kong to Macau and the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai—the world’s longest sea crossing bridge—as part of China’s plan to connect Greater Bay Area.” This ambitious plan seeks to spur economic development and “lays out strategic visions for the major cities in the region to become hubs in different sectors.” For example, “Hong Kong would strengthen its status as a finance and trade hub” while Shenzhen would be a tech hub and “Macau would focus on tourism.” An impressive plan, but “analysts question whether its lofty goals can be achieved.”
Tags: Ambitious, China, Finance, Greater Bay Area, Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, Tech hub, Trade, Xi, Zhuhai
Financial Times (January 24)
Undercover reporting by the Financial Times revealed “groping and sexual harassment” at a secretive black-tie event that “has been a mainstay of London’s social calendar for 33 years.” Thursday’s event, attended by 360 men “from British business, politics and finance” with entertainment provided by 130 female hostesses, however, will be the last. The expose unleashed a deluge of criticism and The Presidents Club is disbanding.
Tags: Black-tie, Business, Entertainment, Finance, Groping, London, Politics, Presidents Club, Reporting, Secretive, Sexual harassment, Social calendar, Undercover
Wall Street Journal (June 15)
The yield on 10-year German bunds turned negative, a new low. “This is good for governments that want to finance spending on the cheap, but it’s not so good for the private risk-taking that drives economic growth. Negative interest rates reflect a lack of confidence in options for private investment. They also discourage savings that can be invested in profitable ventures. A negative 10-year bond is less a sign of monetary wizardry than of economic policy failure.”
Tags: Bunds, Confidence, Finance, Germany, Governments, Growth, Investment, Negative interest, Options, Risk-taking, Savings, Spending, Yield
