.png?width=200&height=78&name=CH%20Diligence%20(thicker%20line).png "CH Diligence (thicker line).png")
Brief: Deutsche Bank plans to shutter one in five branches in Germany as it seeks to save costs and capitalise on the changing habits of customers during the coronavirus pandemic, an executive said. Philipp Gossow, who oversees the retail banking business in Germany, told Reuters that the reduction to some 400 branches from around 500 currently would occur primarily in urban locations and take place “as quickly as possible”. The cull comes as Deutsche Bank undergoes a broad overhaul of its global operations that began in 2019 after years of losses. German banks traditionally operate large numbers of branches compared with those in the Netherlands or Britain, where customers are more comfortable with digital banking. Banks throughout Europe are rethinking their branch strategies in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. Deutsche’s rival Commerzbank recently opted to shut 200 of its 1,000 branches and is considering closing hundreds more. “Coronavirus has further changed the demands placed on advisory services and the branch business,” Gossow said.
Brief: The hedge fund Citadel Advisors LLC, United Airlines and an El Salvadoran air mogul are among investors offering loans as part of Latin American airline Avianca Holdings SA’s $2 billion bankruptcy financing plan, according to court documents. The companies, which were stakeholders in the air carrier before it filed for Chapter 11 protection in May, would help provide about $722 million in loans. Together with a separate tranche of roughly $1.3 billion of debt, Avianca said it has commitments for $2 billion in debtor-in-possession funding. “Securing these financing commitments is another concrete step forward in our Chapter 11 reorganization process,” said Anko van der Werff, chief executive officer in a statement. The plan needs approval from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. Avianca shares were flat in Bogota trading. Bonds due in 2023, which will be rolled up in the financing plan, were unchanged, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The debt being offered by an affiliate of Citadel -- the famed hedge fund founded by billionaire Ken Griffin -- United, and El Salvadoran Roberto Kriete’s Kingsland Holdings would be eligible to roll over into common shares when Avianca emerges from the Chapter 11 reorganization, according to court filings.
Brief: One of the biggest retail real estate owners in the country, Brookfield Properties, is going through a major round of job cuts, CNBC has learned, as the coronavirus pandemic takes a toll on its business and new leasing activity at its malls dries up. “While many companies were quick to implement furloughs and layoffs at the onset of the pandemic, we made the conscious decision to keep all our team employed while we gained a better understanding of its longer-term impact on our company,” Jared Chupaila, CEO of Brookfield Properties’ retail group, said this week in an email to employees, which was obtained by CNBC. However, he said, the mall owner has now decided to make cuts “to align with the future scale of our portfolio.” Chupaila said the reductions are going to affect roughly 20% of the company’s workforce, across both its corporate headquarters and leasing agents in the field. Brookfield Properties’ retail division employees about 2,000 people. Brookfield Properties has more than 170 retail properties in 43 states, according to its website, including Brookfield Place downtown in New York City and Fashion Show Mall in Las Vegas… Brookfield Asset Management’s real estate businesses employ roughly 22,000 people globally, according to its latest annual filing, which includes other asset classes like office space.
Brief: The economic implications of COVID-19 are yet to be fully realized, but the expectations of the detrimental impact are sobering. The pandemic has not only shaken up reality but has woken the world up to addressing underlying societal and economic issues that may have previously been dismissed. The virus is a major global threat, but it will not be the last such threat that we face in the coming years. Climate change, pollution, and growing social and economic inequality, among other issues, all have the power to massively disrupt our way of life. But from these threats comes greater awareness of the need for reinvention, and with reinvention comes great opportunity to align and contribute toward our modern, more sustainable future. A key opportunity for investors to combat the effects of the pandemic is through real estate investing. This can be achieved in a multitude of ways, such as providing low income housing options, rent-relief for hospitals and built-for-purpose medical centers for pandemic efforts, with climate change efforts at the core of each investment. During times of distress, there is a silver lining: unique industry advancements and unprecedented innovation. We have seen strides in technological development and increased private market participants, all working together to fill gaps caused by the pandemic.
Brief: Oil pipelines, hotels, convenience stores and automaker bonds are among the assets being bought by some of the world’s biggest asset managers as they look for value in a world thrown into turmoil by the coronavirus pandemic. In interviews with sovereign wealth funds, pension firms and asset managers across Asia and Europe that collectively manage about $3.4 trillion, one thing was clear: many of them are avoiding the overheated stock market. The most common outlook was one of caution. They are mindful that much of the rebound in markets and private-company valuations is thanks to ultra-low interest rates, massive central bank stimulus and government fiscal support, some of which could start to be wound back in coming months. With asset values still seen as inflated, even in some hot areas like healthcare and technology, many are waiting for a potential second downturn after stimulus measures end but before mass vaccinations enable economies to restart without risking widespread infection.
Brief: The heads of Man Group Plc and Schroders Plc say the shift to working from home during the pandemic will become the new normal for financial firms. Man Group expects to have about 10% of employees back in the office next week unless the government imposes new restrictions on London, where the majority of its roughly 1,500 staff work, Chief Executive Officer Luke Ellis said at a virtual event on Monday. The world’s biggest publicly traded hedge fund firm won’t even try to get back to having more than about 70% of staff working in the office on any given day. At Schroders, about 20% of its employees are in the office now, and if that number rises to 50% in the future that would be “very positive,” CEO Peter Harrison said at the City Week event. The London-based asset manager, which has about 5,000 employees worldwide, recently loosened its rules to make it easier for staff to work from home when they need to. “We have gone forward 20 years in terms of the future of work,” Harrison said. “People don’t want to come in five days a week, and I don’t think it is helpful for them and I don’t think it is good for them.”… Ellis said that the average worker in the City of London spends about 10% of income on commuting. “If they don’t have to do that apart from occasionally, that is a significant benefit for them, that in the long run means lower cost for the company,” he said.
Brief: The financial sector was hit hard Monday following a report alleging that a number of banks, JPMorgan, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon among them, have continued to profit from illicit dealings with disreputable people and criminal networks despite previous warnings from regulators. According to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, leaked government documents show that the banks continued moving illicit funds even after being warned of potential criminal prosecutions. The report compounded a massive sell-off across global markets because of gloom and doom over COVID-19 infections and the economic damage from the pandemic. The consortium reported that documents indicate that JPMorgan moved money for people and companies tied to the massive looting of public funds in Malaysia, Venezuela and the Ukraine. The bank also processed more than $50 million in payments over a decade for Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for President Donald Trump, according to the documents, which are known as the FinCEN Files.
Brief: Investors are bracing for an extended period of market volatility, as worries over a potential resurgence in coronavirus cases and political uncertainty roil stocks. The Cboe Volatility Index, known as “Wall Street’s fear gauge,” hit its highest level in nearly two weeks as concerns over waning fiscal stimulus and the long-term economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic took the S&P 500 down to a seven-week low on Monday. [.N] Market participants aren’t expecting the turbulence to die down any time soon. VIX futures show that investors are betting that market swings will persist beyond the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election and into December, reflecting worries over the possibility of a contested election and concerns that a deeply divided government will fail to agree on providing more fiscal stimulus to support the U.S. economy. “It’s not just Election Day that matters to this market,” said Stacey Gilbert, portfolio manager for derivatives at Glenmede Investment Management. “It’s also ‘do we get fiscal stimulus or do we not?’” Those concerns, some investors say, have been sharpened by the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which observers expect to deepen partisan divides as it sets up what promises to be a fierce fight in the U.S. Senate over President Donald Trump’s eventual nominee to replace her.
Brief: Carlyle Group Inc., the alternative asset manager overseeing $221 billion, is buying a majority stake in clinical data company TriNetX Inc. Equity capital for the investment came from the $18.5 billion private equity fund, Carlyle Partners VII, the company said Monday, declining to comment on deal terms. Closely held TriNetX has built a global network of research hospitals and academic institutions, biotechnology and drug companies, contract research organizations and other specialty data partners. Carlyle’s investment will help the company, founded in 2013, bring more technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to researchers, according to Gadi Lachman, chief executive officer of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based TriNetX… The deal adds to Carlyle’s growth investments in the health-care industry. The firm said earlier this month it led a $175 million round for Grand Rounds. Carlyle also backed 1Life Healthcare Inc., the primary-care clinic chain that went public in January. Other deals have focused more broadly on technology…
Brief: In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, as businesses across the country urged employees to work from home, rents plunged in New York City, San Francisco and other densely-populated cities. Still, prominent hedge funds, including D1 Capital Partners and Long Pond Capital and mutual fund giants Capital Group and T. Rowe Price, purchased shares in the second quarter in companies that rent residential real estate in urban markets, buying in at beaten-down levels and possibly betting on a faster rebound than Wall Street forecast. Now, nearly three months later, shares of real estate trusts that specialize in urban apartment rentals are down more than the broader real estate sector and the benchmark S&P 500 stock index for the year-to-date and since the March market rout. Shares of Equity Residential, founded by billionaire Sam Zell, are up 7% since the March low, AvalonBay Communities, which owns the Avalon Morningside Park with views of Manhattan, and UDR are up 26% and 14%, respectively, while the S&P 500 is up 48%. “The next three to five years are going to be very challenging,” said Jonathan Litt, whose hedge fund Land & Buildings Investment Management concentrates on real estate. “The key is to stay alive until 2025 in these markets.”
Brief: Hedge fund managers that have successfully navigated their way through the first half of this year and are producing good returns are in demand by institutional investors that are adding more hedge fund exposure to their portfolios and/or are upgrading lackluster managers with better choices. "There's a sense of optimism from hedge fund managers, backed up by investors," said Thomas P. Kehoe, managing director and global head of research and communications for the London-based Alternative Investment Management Association. "More investors are interested in hedge funds, and are seeing a real tool they can latch on to in this difficult environment for preserving capital, managing volatility, mitigating risk and producing returns," Mr. Kehoe said. In fact, high volatility in the first quarter this year was the catalyst for investors to consider more investment in hedge funds, said Kenneth J. Heinz, president of index provider Hedge Fund Research Inc., Chicago. "A year ago, institutional investors were very complacent. They aren't anymore because of ultra-high equity valuations. They're building out their hedge fund portfolios by putting the unallocated portion of their hedge fund target to work," Mr. Heinz said.
Brief: The closure of passenger air links between the U.S. and the U.K. will strip at least 11 billion pounds ($14.21 billion) off U.K. gross domestic product in 2020, according to a report commissioned by British Airways’ parent IAG SA, London’s Heathrow Airport, the Airlines U.K trade group and airport services firm Collinson Group. The authors called for the creation of city or state-based travel corridors between the U.S. and the U.K. as well as airport testing for Covid-19. Keeping the routes closed will cost the U.K. economy 32 million pounds a day by the beginning of October, according to the report. “Government inaction on aviation and its impact on Britain’s economy couldn’t be clearer,” British Airways Chief Executive Officer Alex Cruz said. “Ministers must reach agreement with their U.S. counterparts on a testing regime that minimizes quarantine and permits regional travel corridors to re-open the U.K.-U.S. market.” Airlines have been campaigning to lift restrictions on trans-Atlantic travel which have been in place since early March. New York to London is BA’s most profitable route, with business travel a key driver of demand. The route generated about 7 million seat sales last year. The U.S. is the single biggest source of visitors to the U.K., with almost 4 million people visiting annually, according to the report.
Brief: Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Brian Moynihan called for another round of federal stimulus to help the U.S. reach a full economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. “You’re back up to where 95% of the economy is back,” Moynihan said Friday in an interview with David Westin in advance of next week’s Bloomberg Equality Summit, adding that more help is needed for restaurants, airlines, performing-arts venues and state and local governments so they can “cross that same bridge” as housing, health-care and other recovered industries. “We’ve got to help everybody else get across.” Moynihan said a year-over-year increase in consumer spending is a sign of the economy’s resilience. U.S. retail sales rose 0.6% last month, following a 0.9% gain in July, the Commerce Department reported earlier this week. Government support for small businesses is running dry with the Paycheck Protection Program having closed in early August, and a supplemental $600 a week in unemployment benefits having expired at the end of July. Some House Democrats are keeping pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bring a new coronavirus relief bill up for a vote next week as they look to signal that the party is pursuing a deal to bolster the economy. Pelosi has held firm that the White House should first agree on a $2.2 trillion plan Democrats have put on the table.
Brief: Wall Street leaders made the case this week for bringing more workers back to the office, while a rash of COVID-19 infections on trading floors showed how quickly they could be sent back home. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Barclays Plc all had to quarantine groups of traders after employees tested positive for the coronavirus. The setbacks threaten a ramp-up of return-to-office efforts that executives have said are necessary to preserve productivity and firm cultures… But ending the lockdowns will mean trying to head off new outbreaks. Goldman Sachs had to send some traders back home after at least one employee tested positive for COVID-19 at its Manhattan headquarters. The firm hasn’t seen any transmission of cases within its offices, according to a person monitoring the situation “Our people’s safety is our first priority, and we are taking appropriate precautions to make sure our workplaces remain safe for those who choose to return,” Leslie Shribman, a spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs, said in a statement Thursday.
Brief: Companies looking to return to the norms of January 2020 should rethink their expectations. The Covid-19 pandemic has permanently changed how businesses operate, according to a report from the Carlyle Group. The virus caused a sudden and swift shock to the U.S. economy. In March, U.S. businesses switched from all staff working in the office to many working from home in just days. The big surprise? Companies of all sizes were able to meet or exceed prepandemic business volumes, according to Jason Thomas, Carlyle’s managing director and head of global research, who wrote the report When the Future Arrives Early. Don’t expect any big changes to remote working once the economy recovers, which could take a few years, wrote Thomas, adding the virus broke the inertia of companies requiring staff to be in the office full time. “Some people may never go back,” Thomas wrote. “In the future, work arrangements will be optimized based on what works best for the employees and the business rather than expectations that had been inherited from a different time.”
Brief: The frantic hunt for an effective vaccine against coronavirus could leave some pharmaceutical companies highly exposed in a fiercely competitive race – and UK hedge fund Argonaut Capital is weighing in with several key bets against the sector. Argonaut’s CEO and CIO Barry Norris, who runs the firm’s Argonaut Absolute Return equity long/short fund, is avoiding large blue-chip drug names such as AstraZeneca and Pfizer (“the vaccine doesn’t really move the dial for them,” he says) as well as small-cap stocks, where there is a liquidity risk. Instead, he has built short positions against the “five biggest pure plays” in the sector, including Moderna – which has a USD25 billion market cap – along with US-focused German companies BioNtec and CureVac, as well as Novavax. “None of them have ever brought a drug or a vaccine to market successfully,” Norris says of his targets, which he sees as being overvalued. “Between them they’ve got about USD500 million of revenues this year, but they’ve got a USD50 billion market cap. There’s a lot of hope and speculation in those share prices.”
Brief: Investec Ltd. expects first-half profit to slump as much as 68% because of the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Headline earnings including the bank’s demerged asset management unit will likely fall to between 7.3 pence and 9 pence in the six months through September, compared with 22.7 pence a year earlier, the Johannesburg-based lender said Friday. “The first half of the year has seen lower average interest rates, reduced client activity and a 22% depreciation of the average rand against pound sterling, compared to the prior period,” it said in a statement. “Capital and liquidity ratios remain robust and are expected to be stable.” The owner of banks and wealth-management businesses is restructuring its U.K. lending operations and planning as many as 210 job cuts -- about 13% of staff -- in order to remove redundant roles and save costs. Investec spun off its asset management unit in March to provide Ninety One Ltd. with more scope to scale-up, while creating a more focused banking unit. Investec Plans to Cut 210 Jobs at Its U.K. Banking Division In line with regulatory guidance in South Africa and the U.K., Investec doesn’t expect to declare an interim dividend, the bank said. In May, the lender scrapped its final dividend and doubled loan-loss provisions as it braced for further fallout from the pandemic.
Brief: Bond investors who wagered on a group of malls owned by Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group are starting to take losses after the Covid-19 pandemic shuttered stores and wiped out emergency cash reserves that had been keeping interest payments flowing. The commercial-property bond, known as Starwood Retail Property Trust 2014-STAR, is backed by an almost $700 million defaulted loan. It’s cutting interest payouts to investors for a second time, after a reserve account dried up in June and a sharply lower property valuation led to the servicer holding back some funds. The bond’s performance shows how rapidly the pandemic is deepening losses in a sector that was already getting crushed by online shopping. Even the part of the bond deal that was once rated AAA -- meaning bond raters saw virtually no risk of taking losses just two months ago -- have now been cut deep into junk territory. “The experience of the mall CMBS from Starwood is certainly symptomatic of the larger narrative,” said Christopher Sullivan, chief investment officer of United Nations Federal Credit Union. Weakening mall asset fundamentals and fewer willing investors “will present ongoing financing problems.”
Brief: BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said he worries that working remotely results in a lack of productivity and collaboration. “The most difficult issue for all of us is retention of a culture,” Fink said Thursday during a virtual conference hosted by Morningstar Inc. “Cultures were not meant to be done in a remote fashion.” Fink said that although he’s proud of how the New York-based company has performed through the Covid-19 pandemic, he’s concerned about 400 new young hires who joined in July, who have never been to the office. BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, said last month that it would allow employees to work remotely for the rest of the year. While some big Wall Street firms are seeking to get staff back to the office, there are already signs of how challenging that could be. JPMorgan Chase & Co. sent some workers home this week after an employee in equities trading tested positive for Covid-19. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said this week that he sees prolonged remote work inflicting serious social and economic damage. “Going back to work is a good thing,” Dimon said in a panel discussion Tuesday.
Brief: Nuveen’s staff will not return to its offices until 2021, Chief Executive Officer Jose Minaya said. That decision was “heavily debated” and so far the company has found that its operations have fared well with staff working remotely, he said at the FT Future of Asset Management virtual conference Thursday. Chicago-based Nuveen is the investment arm of retirement savings giant TIAA. “The engagement with clients is the highest ever,” Minaya said. Minaya also said about 4% of Nuveen’s investment staff took voluntary buyouts and the company expects no layoffs for the foreseeable future. The rate is comparable to the company’s turnover for investment personnel in 2019, he said. In May, TIAA offered a voluntary separation program for most of its global workforce. The buyout offer went to 75% of the company’s 16,500 employees. Asset management firms have been closely scrutinizing expenses as investors have flocked to low-cost index funds. The move has cut into profit for some firms and made it difficult for smaller investment companies to compete against behemoths including BlackRock Inc.
Brief: New manager Hickory Lane Capital Management has launched a $100 million equity long-short fund with seed money from Investcorp-Tages, a joint venture formed in May, as well as capital from outside investors, including family offices and peer hedge fund managers. Investcorp and European asset manager Tages earlier this year consolidated their absolute return businesses to form a new venture that includes customized portfolios, a hedge fund seeding business, and multi-manager portfolios in private debt and other alternative investments. Prior to forming the joint venture, the two firms had deployed $2 billion in assets between them and seeded 42 emerging managers, mostly hedge funds. Hickory Lane founder and chief investment officer Joshua Pearl, who spent nine years investing in stocks as a partner at Brahman Capital, never expected that he’d build his first hedge fund firm in a pandemic. But shortly after leaving Brahman, the spread of Covid-19 shut down economies around the globe.
Brief: As millions of Canadians lost their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic and the economy collapsed, the country’s richest got richer — more proof that the economy and the stock market do not always move in lockstep. Canada’s 20 richest have collectively added $37 billion to their fortunes since March, according to a new report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. None of them experienced a drop in net worth. David Thomson and family, who’s consistently at the top of the country’s richest lists with their media and publishing empire, led the way with a $8.8 billion increase in wealth. Shopify’s skyrocketing stock price gave founder and CEO Tobi Lutke a $6.6 billion increase. The continued rise in e-commerce helped Alibaba’s Joseph Tsai come in fourth place, with a $4.5 billion increase. Lululemon founder Chip Wilson was next with a nearly $3 billion gain — evidence that the pandemic has kept athleisure in vogue. And 92 year old James Irving, head of the J.D. Irving conglomerate, rounded out the top five by adding $2.1 billion. But as their wealth grew COVID-19 took a record toll on Canada’s economy and the unemployment rate hit an all-time high of 13.7 per cent in May, 1.1 million people are still out of work. “At the same time as billionaires like Loblaws owner Galen Weston have seen their wealth balloon, front-line workers stocking shelves and scanning groceries at his stores have continued to risk their health and that of their loved ones by coming into work,” said Alex Hemingway and Michal Rozworski in the report.
Brief: Following a historic rally from March lows, Bank of America Securities' latest Fund Manager Survey showed that a majority of the respondents believed a new bull market had started. The survey, conducted between September 3 and 10, involved 224 managers with assets worth $646 billion under management. Around 58% percent managers said that the market is bullish, compared to 25 percent in March. However, 29 percent were of the view that the market is still bearish. While 41 percent of those surveyed said that COVID-19 vaccine could trigger higher bond yields, 37 percent said that inflation would be responsible for higher bond yields. On recovery, 37 percent said that it would be U-shaped or W-shaped and 20 percent said that recovery charts would be V-shaped. Around 51 percent of fund managers preferred the balance sheet discipline, whereas 37 percent wanted increased capital expenditure as compared to 13 percent in April. While most managers believed that a vaccine announcement would be made in the first quarter of 2021, some 32 percent were optimistic of an announcement in the Q4 of 2020.Around 84 percent of the managers said they expected global growth to go up within the next 12 months.
Brief: The number of money management firms with employees working from home has barely budged over the summer, a Callan survey released Wednesday showed. Callan said 81% had not opened their offices as of Aug. 15, nearly the same as the 84% that had reported keeping their doors closed in June. The investment consultant's second "Coping with COVID-19" survey report said 44% of the 98 responding firms have not set a date for returning to the office. Of the remaining universe of managers surveyed in August, 36% said they don't expect to go back until 2021. Just 2% of firms picked that time frame in the June survey. A September opening date was named by 12% of August respondents vs. 25% in June; an October date was picked by 7% in the recent survey, compared to 1% in the previous survey; and just 1% of those recently surveyed cited November as the month they might reopen vs. zero in the June survey. By region, more managers — 38% each — in the U.K. and Southeastern U.S. now have staff in the office. The level of office openings was 20% on the U.S. West Coast, 12% in the Northeast and 9% in the center of the country. The offices for the two managers surveyed in the Mountain West are both closed.
Brief: U.S. workers who are being shepherded back to the office would rather continue doing their jobs from home, at least a few days a week. It’s not that they hate the idea of returning, but more that they’ve grown to really like the work-from-home life. It’s becoming the big topic of conversation across virtual workplaces, as companies try to get employees to leave their makeshift desks in bedrooms, kitchen counters, porches or backyards for the once-familiar surroundings of the good old office. A Wells Fargo/Gallup survey released Wednesday found 42% of 1,094 workers surveyed in August had a positive view of working remotely, versus 14% who viewed it negatively. Almost a third of the 1,200 U.S. office workers surveyed by consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers in June said they’d prefer to never go back to the office, while 72% said they’d like to work away from the office at least two days a week. Until recently, for those lucky enough to still have a job and to be able to do it from home, the question of whether they wanted to return to the office was theoretical. Now the prospect’s real. JPMorgan Chase & Co. has told its most senior sales and trading staff that they need to be in the office by Sept. 21. (There are exceptions for those with health or childcare issues.) At other firms, workers are being encouraged rather than commanded to come back, and employees are debating whether that means they have a choice to opt out of returning. A June survey of 1,000 professionals by management consulting firm Korn Ferry asked a simple question: “What are you most looking forward to when you return to the office?” About half pointed to camaraderie with colleagues, though 20% said they looked forward to nothing at all.
Brief: London firms are dumping their unwanted office space as the pandemic forces tenants to review their real-estate needs. Excess space being offered for rent by companies in the capital has surged to the most in at least 15 years as businesses look to cut costs and shift more staff to long-term home working, according to research by real-estate data company CoStar Group Inc. More than 1 million square feet (92,900 square meters) has become available for sublet since June, the equivalent of two Gherkin skyscrapers. The trend is so far limited to London: the city’s second-hand space surged by 21% in the period, compared with just a 1% increase for the rest of the U.K…. Second-hand space poses a threat to developers building new offices, offering tenants seeking to move a cheaper alternative. While newly developed space that has yet to be leased in London remains relatively scarce, overall vacancy rates are increasing due to the buildings being offered up by companies that no longer need them. Banks including Credit Suisse Group AG, HSBC Holdings Plc and Nomura Holdings Inc. are among those companies currently trying to rent out excess space they no longer need, Bloomberg News reported.
Brief: Middle-market lender Antares Capital has raised just over $3 billion for its latest credit fund, which will focus on providing financing to mainly mid-sized private equity-backed companies. The vehicle, which held its final close this week, raised cash from sovereign wealth funds, public and private pensions, asset managers, banks and insurance companies, according to head of asset management Vivek Mathew. The fund, which attracted institutional investors from the U.S., Canada, Asia and the Middle East, exceeded its $1.5 billion target, Mathew said… The vehicle’s close comes as fundraising in the $850 billion private credit universe rallied in the second quarter, buoyed in part by appetite for opportunistic and distressed strategies. Investors have also been lured by juicy yields in the rapidly growing market… Mid-sized companies and their private equity backers are likely to find the flexibility of private credit even more appealing amid the uncertainty caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, according to John Graham. “At the end of the day, there is a large, scalable opportunity set there,” he said.
Brief: The coming years could be a “lost decade” for equity returns as companies struggle to grow their earnings, Blackstone’s Executive Vice Chairman, Tony James, told CNBC on Wednesday. James, who’s attending the virtual Singapore Summit, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” that stock prices may not rise further after becoming fully valued over a “five- to 10-year horizon.” “I think this could be a lost decade in terms of equity appreciation,” he said, referring to a term commonly used to describe a period in the 1990s when Japan experienced economic stagnation. He explained that current low interest rates may not dip further and may instead rise to more normal levels in the coming years.Higher interest rates, in many instances, tend to negatively affect corporate earnings and stock prices. High borrowing costs will eat into company profits and hurt share prices. In addition, companies will face “plenty of headwinds” that put pressure on earnings, he said. That include higher taxes, increase in operating costs, less efficient supply chains and “deglobalization” that will hurt productivity, explained James. “All of that will be economic headwinds for companies. So I think you can have disappointing long term earnings growth with multiples coming in a little bit, and I can see anemic equity returns over the next five to 10 years,” he added.
Brief: During times of disruption it can be expedient to be tactical and strategic. Crises can also provide a significant reminder on the need for good planning. And, family offices, unlike some other more cumbersome financial institutions, have the advantage of being dexterous and efficient, a key capability for investors in the turbulence of 2020. The Asset recently spoke with two Singapore-based family office groups – Golden Equator Wealth and Maitri Asset Management – about how they have managed their way through the Covid-19 pandemic, what they have learned, and which themes have emerged. Gary Tiernan, managing partner at Golden Equator Wealth, believes there is no doubt that well-run multi-family offices (MFOs) and single-family offices typically have clear decision-making processes and responsibilities that allow for quick decisions when required. “From an investment perspective, the short lines of decision-making responsibility made it easier to execute buying decisions in March when volatility was so large that slow action could have had a high opportunity cost,” Tiernan says. “The sense of responsibility for client family wealth sharpens the focus on doing the right things to steward and grow that wealth.”
Brief: As the Coronavirus pandemic continues to cut through our lives, the urgency of robust public assistance for businesses remains a matter of vital economic importance. And yet, since the earliest days of the crisis, certain critics have taken exception to the role of private equity in the recovery. Much outrage has been directed at a perceived conflict between private investment firms who hold large quantities of dry powder (unused capital) and petitions to include their portfolio companies in public business stimulus packages such as the Paycheck Protection Program. Some critics might wonder why loans are given to those who don’t put their dry powder towards portfolio company support. But this stance not only over-simplifies and mischaracterises the role of dry powder, it is emblematic of much wider misconceptions about the significant contributions private equity makes both to portfolio companies and the economy as a whole. As governments around the globe consider additional stimulus spending in the face of COVID-19, it’s especially relevant to reconsider these misconceptions about the industry, recognise the value private equity provides during a downturn, and offer support instead of resistance. Regardless of what the critics think they know about private equity, the simple fact is that the industry supports 843,000 jobs and 4,300 businesses in the UK alone – and the US paints a similar picture. Negative attitudes about dry powder should not be permitted to overshadow such numbers.
Brief: JPMorgan Chase & Co. sent some of its Manhattan workers home this week after an employee in equities trading tested positive for Covid-19, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. News of the infection, on the fifth floor of the company’s 383 Madison Ave. building, was communicated to employees on Sept. 13, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing information that isn’t public. That was less than a week after more workers began returning to offices after the Labor Day holiday, and just days after the biggest U.S. bank told senior traders they’d be required to return by Sept. 21. The case shows the challenges banks face as they try to bring more staff back to the office after months of remote work. JPMorgan has been among the boldest banks in calling workers back, and Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon spoke earlier Tuesday about his concerns that extended work-from-home could have its own consequences.
Brief: Jamie Dimon says it’s time to get people back to work. The JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief executive officer, who’s been going into the bank’s offices since June, said he sees economic and social damage from a longer stretch of working-from-home. Governments should be focused on cautiously reopening cities, learning from earlier mistakes made in hasty attempts. “Going back to work is a good thing,” Dimon said in a virtual panel discussion at the Singapore Summit. It makes sense to “carefully open up and see if we can get the economy growing for the sake of everybody.” Dimon told analysts at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods that the firm has noted productivity slipping from employees working at home, the analysts said in a Sept. 13 note to clients. That, along with worries that remote work is no substitute for in-person interaction, is part of why the biggest U.S. bank is urging more workers to return to offices over the coming weeks.
Brief: Global investors have disproportionately reduced spending on commercial real estate in Asia Pacific compared with other regions amid the pandemic and the outlook remains challenging, according to a report. Total volume of commercial property acquisitions, including office, retail and hotels, was about 65% of the levels recorded in the last two years, the Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements said in its quarterly review. By contrast, volumes in the Americas fell just 25% in the first half of the year, while those in Africa, Europe and the Middle East were little changed due to some large deals. “Cross-border investors may be particularly flighty when they face a large global shock such as the Covid-19 pandemic,” the BIS said. “It is then that their impact as marginal investors makes itself felt.” A surge in cases following the virus outbreak forced countries like China and Singapore to impose stringent border controls and lockdowns in the early days of the pandemic, making it harder for investors to seal real estate deals. Even as they’ve reopened their economies, those countries are still cautious in easing travel restrictions amid a resurgence in global virus cases that threatens to derail containment efforts.
Brief: Activist-focused managers comfortably outperformed other strategy types last month, as the hedge fund industry continues to recover from the Covid-19 turmoil with solid August gains and positive year-to-date returns, new eVestment data shows. Activism-focused hedge funds rose 7.88 per cent in August. Known - and sometimes feared - for their often-combative approaches to investing, which include a range of tactics and methods to effect board level change and improve shareholder value, such funds have now made 3.25 per cent on average this year, eVestment said. That number is still down sharply from their 17.46 per cent gain last year, which itself represented a stellar comeback following a torrid 2018, when activists lost more than 10 per cent for the year. Overall, new eVestment metrics show that most hedge fund types and strategies are now in positive performance territory this year. Hedge funds added some 2.5 per cent on average in August, bringing their year-to-date returns to 2.21 per cent. That suggests the industry is broadly regaining its footing following a challenging few months amid the coronavirus crisis.
Brief: Citigroup Inc. will resume job cuts starting this week, joining rivals such as Wells Fargo & Co. in ending an earlier pledge to pause staff reductions during the coronavirus pandemic. The cuts will affect less than 1% of the bank’s global workforce, the bank said in a statement. With recent hiring, overall headcount probably won’t show any drops, the bank said. “The decision to eliminate even a single colleague role is very difficult, especially during these challenging times,” Citigroup said in the statement. “We will do our best to support each person, including offering the ability to apply for open roles in other parts of the firm and providing severance packages.” The bank said it has hired more than 26,000 people this year, and over one-third of those jobs were in the U.S. The lender had roughly 204,000 employees at the end of the second quarter. Banks have resumed job cuts in recent weeks after pledging, en masse, to pause such actions earlier this year. Many firms are pushing to cut costs as the pandemic has dragged on, threatening lenders with higher credit costs and crimping revenue growth.
Brief: New data from by Buy Shares indicates that 14 selected major global banks cumulatively lost USD635.33 billion in market capitalisation between December 2019 and August 2020, largely the main as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Wells Fargo recorded the biggest slump with a percentage change in the market capitalisation at -56.26 per cent followed by Spain’s Banco Santander at -46.16 per cent. JP Morgan Chase’s change in market capitalisation was -30.16 per cent. During the period, Japan-based Mizuho Financial Group had the least change at -11.33 per cent. Intervention by central banks cushioned most facilities from a further slump. “The drop in valuations for the selected banks could have been much worse if there was no intervention from central banks. The immediate measures taken by regulators to ease restrictions on liquidity and capital, banks have proved beneficial," says Buy Shares. "Although the measures put in place by authorities helped banks, they still face some immediate pressures on their capital and liquidity position, as the length and severity of the outbreak remain uncertain.” An overview of the individual market capitalisation shows that JP Morgan still holds a superior position at USD437.2 billion in December 2019 and USD305.44 billion as of August 2020. In December last year, Wells Fargo market cap stood at USD227.5 billion and in August it stood at USD99.5 billion.
Brief: Like hospital chains across the U.S., LifePoint Health tapped federal relief money to blunt the cost of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was a potent lifeline, a total of $1.5 billion. But LifePoint is unusual in one respect, its owner: private equity firm Apollo Global Management, led by billionaire Leon Black. LifePoint was certainly eligible for the money. But the extent of the federal assistance could contribute to concern in Washington over whether private equity-backed hospitals should have been. In July, the U.S. House passed a bill that would require health-care companies to disclose any private equity backing when seeking short-term loans from the federal Medicare program. The reason for lawmakers’ concern: Private equity firms have ample access to cash. As recently as June, the Apollo fund that owns LifePoint had more than $2 billion to support its investments. Apollo, which manages $414 billion, recently told investors in an internal document that LifePoint was in such a strong market position that it was planning to make acquisitions of less fortunate hospitals. The relief flowing to LifePoint illustrates a drawback of a government program designed to send out money quickly to every hospital, regardless of financial circumstances, according to Gerard Anderson, a health policy professor at Johns Hopkins University.
Brief: A troubling pattern emerged as most of JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s employees worked from home to stem the spread of Covid-19: productivity slipped. Work output by younger employees was particularly affected on Mondays and Fridays, according to findings discussed by Chief Executive Office Jamie Dimon in a private meeting with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods analysts. That, along with worries that remote work is no substitute for organic interaction, are part of why the biggest U.S. bank is urging more workers to return to offices over the coming weeks. “The WFH lifestyle seems to have impacted younger employees, and overall productivity and ‘creative combustion’ has taken a hit,” KBW’s Brian Kleinhanzl wrote in a Sept. 13 note to clients, citing an earlier meeting with Dimon. A JPMorgan representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. JPMorgan’s findings provide a data point in the debate over whether employees perform as well at the kitchen table as they do in the workplace, showing extended remote work may not be all it’s cracked up to be, at least for some job functions. While pre-pandemic studies found remote workers were just as efficient as those in offices, there were questions about how employees would perform under compulsory lockdowns.
Brief: Even though U.S. stocks are behaving like government stimulus will go on forever and Covid-19 will vanish shortly, emerging markets are giving investors a taste of what could happen when the world ultimately normalizes. One notable trend is that value stocks in emerging markets have finally stabilized. Value stocks have underperformed for years, setting off a frenzied debate on whether or not the investing style still works. “It seems that emerging markets are behaving defensively. Low vol is doing well and value stocks are not declining. Perhaps this is because emerging markets don't expect a big stimulus to artificially keep them going through a second Covid wave and therefore have to rely on normal market dynamics,” wrote Damian Handzy, Style Analytics’ head of research and chief commercial officer, in the firm’s most recent analysis of factor performance. In the paper published on Monday, the research firm found that August was the first month since the crash in March that Europe, the emerging markets, and the U.S. have diverged from one another.
Brief: The woman running one of Sweden’s biggest pension funds says the Covid crisis has done less damage to property markets than some feared. That’s why Kristin Magnusson Bernard, the chief executive of Sweden’s $40 billion AP1 fund, is “heavily exposed” to prime real estate in city centers. Magnusson Bernard says she and her team in Stockholm “have thought a lot about what a world with less demand for office spaces would mean for us.” Though it’s clear “the sector will see some adjustments,” she said, “We don’t believe in any systemic meltdown in the real estate market. That is not our view.” At the end of June, AP1’s real estate exposure was close to $6 billion, or almost 15% of the total portfolio. The return over the first six months of the year was 1.1%, making real estate one of the better performing major asset classes that AP1 invests in. Overall, the fund lost 1.8% in the first half, after costs. A recent study by Norwegian bank DNB found that working from home is likely to be considerably more widespread after the Covid-19 crisis than it was before. The survey, which focused on Norway and Sweden, showed that 28% of office tenants expect to continue working from home, more than double the pre-crisis level. AP1 holds key stakes in some of the Nordic region’s biggest property managers and developers, such as Vasakronan AB. “We are heavily exposed to that type of prime locations in city centers,” Magnusson Bernard said.
Brief: Bank of America Corp. has begun using artificial intelligence to predict the likelihood of companies defaulting on loans. “Today we present our inaugural work on applying the latest machine learning tools to analyzing the credit risk,” Bank of America credit strategists Oleg Melentyev and Eric Yu and head of predictive analytics Toby Wade said in a research note Friday. They have started using natural language processing to digest earnings-calls transcripts in order to estimate companies’ probability of default over the next 12 months. In expanding their default model with the help of AI, the credit strategists seek to detect language used by chief executive officers and chief financial officers that signals a company’s high likelihood of default. Phrases that link to defaulting include cost cutting, asset sales, and cash burn, they said. Natural language processing has pointed to “more significant credit stresses” in sectors exposed to Covid-19 than under Bank of America’s existing default framework, according to the note. For example, the machine-learning technology predicts default rates will be higher in energy, transportation, and media, and lower than estimated in the cable and health-care sectors.
Brief: The Covid-19 crisis is pushing Africa to the financial brink. African governments are under pressure to continue servicing their external loans, leaving them with few resources to confront a historic pandemic and its economic fallout. Without external support – specifically, a comprehensive repayment freeze – some African economies will buckle under their debt burden. The resulting domino effect could imperil the entire continent’s development and harm richer countries, too. The international community’s response so far has been mixed. The most notable step so far – the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) for the world’s poorest countries – covers only official bilateral debt. But 61% of African DSSI countries’ debt-service payments this year will go to private creditors, bondholders, and multilateral lenders like the World Bank. And, despite the G20’s assurances, some countries joining the DSSI were subsequently downgraded by global ratings agencies. The World Bank has played an unhelpful role here. Although its president, David Malpass, recently called for expanded debt relief and even raised the possibility of a write-off, he has also resisted calls for the Bank itself (a major lender to Africa) to freeze debt repayments. Instead, the US-dominated institution seems more interested in scoring political points by urging the China Development Bank to join the G20 initiative, even though doing so would really affect only one African country.
Brief: President Trump on Friday lauded the nation's biggest bank for calling its top trading staff back to the office after months of remote work. "Congratulations to JPMorgan Chase for ordering everyone BACK TO OFFICE on September 21st," Trump tweeted. "Will always be better than working from home!" JPMorgan told senior employees of the sales and trading operation in London and New York that they and their teams must return to the office by Sept. 21, a person familiar with the matter told FOX Business. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news Thursday. Employees who have medical conditions that make them more vulnerable to COVID-19 complications, or who live with someone considered at increased risk of severe illness, can continue working from home. That exemption also applies to employees with child-care issues Companies that have permitted their employees to work virtually for the majority of the year face a challenge in calling them back. Colleges and universities that welcomed back thousands of students to their campuses are now beset by COVID-19 cases.
Brief: Money managers are selling collateralized loan obligations at yields that would have been unthinkably low just a few days ago, signaling that one of the more battered corners of the credit market may be healing amid the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented support for company debt. Ares Management Corp. is marketing a CLO that is expected to carry a risk premium, or spread, of just 1.28 percentage point more than the benchmark on its highest-rated portion, according to people with knowledge of the transaction. BlackRock Inc. sold a deal on Thursday with AAA notes yielding 1.27 percentage point more than the London interbank offered rate. Collateralized loan obligations, or bonds backed by portfolios of leveraged loans, have been one of the last areas of corporate debt market to recover after security prices broadly plunged in March. As the Covid-19 pandemic weighed on company revenues, ratings firms began downgrading leveraged loans, which in turn spooked investors in CLOs. Even as recently as earlier this week, the risk premiums on KKR & Co.’s AAA notes priced at 1.5 percentage point more than Libor. Spreads in Europe are similarly narrowing, with AAA risk premiums as much as 0.2 percentage point tighter than they were in August. For U.S. deals, the healing in recent weeks has come in part because asset managers have sold so few new CLOs, according to a Wells Fargo & Co. report dated September 9.
Brief: It surely goes without saying that COVID-19 has disrupted businesses of all types. And the Alternative Investment sector has not been immune. KPMG International and AIMA (Alternative Investment Management Association) surveyed 144 hedge fund managers globally, representing an estimated US$840 billion in assets under management (AUM), more than one-quarter of the industry’s total. The research examines in detail the effects of the pandemic on the alternative investment industry. In addition, KPMG International and AIMA canvassed the views of the industry via one-to-one interviews with Hedge Funds, investors and key ecosystem players including technology companies, prime brokers, fund administrators and law firms to provide additional insights to the survey findings. Through the various discussions and survey results it highlighted that in times of market volatility and business uncertainty – alternative investments fulfil an important role in an investor’s portfolio. Throughout the pandemic, the Hedge Fund industry has proven its ability to manage risk and volatility while still producing above-market returns for investors. Significant uncertainty may remain, but in conversations with fund managers and the data suggests the industry remains agile and resilient and is taking prudent steps in order to embrace the new reality.
Brief: Just 27% of private equity and venture capital fund managers globally expect investment activity to remain flat or rise in the coming months, with the remaining 73% taking a more pessimistic view, as managers grapple with uncertainty following the spread of coronavirus, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence survey. Of the 142 managers polled globally, 30% expect dealmaking to slow by between a quarter and a half, with 29% expecting a volume dip of one-quarter and 13% taking a more negative view, predicting a drop of over 50%. The largest proportion of North American and Latin American respondents expect activity to decrease by between 25% to 50% in their regions. There was more optimism from respondents in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with the majority of respondents expecting activity to dip by less than 25%. Asia-Pacific respondents were particularly upbeat, with the largest proportion expecting investment activity to remain flat or decrease. But that does not mean managers expect their own investment pipelines to come to a halt. More than half — 58% — of respondents globally will focus on making new, selective investments over the coming months, with 23% indicating they will focus on stabilizing their portfolios.
Brief: According to Ray Dalio, the coronavirus pandemic was a blow to the system. But in his view, Covid-19 isn’t the biggest game changer. Instead, the Bridgewater Associates founder said Thursday that he sees the convergence of monetary policy, social and economic gaps, and the rise of China as forces that could change the world. Dalio shared his views on these changes — and how history informs them — Thursday at a digital event held by the Economic Club of New York. “It was the shock,” Dalio said of the pandemic. He added that history has shown that these shocks — whether they’re natural disasters, pandemics, or other calamities — become stress tests for a country’s health, financial and otherwise. But when the pandemic recedes, Dalio said he believes that these issues will remain. “How do you pay the bills?” he asked. “Are we going to be at each other’s throats? And what do the five wars, the conflicts with China, look like?” According to Dalio, those conflicts could include a trade war, a technology war, a geopolitical war, a capital war, or a military war.
Brief: Asset manager MKP Capital Management has placed a 70 percent probability on a Covid-19 vaccine being approved in 2020, with a smaller chance of that happening before the U.S. presidential election. MKP Capital, an alternative asset manager focused on global macro and fixed-income relative value strategies, sees a 40 percent chance that a vaccine will be approved before the election on November 3, according to a report from the firm dated September 9. “It is now MKP’s strong base case that we will have at least one successful vaccine by the end of the year,” the firm said in the report. “A major question mark remains around whether a vaccine will be available ahead of this date and potentially provide a boost to President Trump’s campaign.” Stocks and bonds were initially rocked by the Covid-19 pandemic this year, tanking during the first quarter before the Federal Reserve stepped in with a series of emergency measures. While markets have rebounded as investors look beyond the economic recession prompted by the deadly disease, some companies and sectors remain battered by the downturn. While the world is beginning to “learn to live with the virus,” Covid-19 is still causing a significant break in economic activity, Michael Hume, MKP’s head of strategy and research, said Thursday in a phone interview.
Brief: The coronavirus pandemic is complicating the task of rooting out modern slavery by making it impossible for companies or investors to visit factory floors in many countries, adding to the challenges of addressing supply-chain risks. The economic shock caused by the coronavirus outbreak is also making people more vulnerable to exploitation, further compounding the problem, Mans Carlsson, the Sydney-based head of ESG research at Ausbil Investment Management, told the Bloomberg Inside Track webinar on Thursday. Australia has gone further than the U.K. and California with laws requiring companies and investors to have a detailed plan on how they will assess and tackle the risk of modern slavery in their supply chains. With more than 40 million people working in slave-like conditions even before the pandemic, more than any time in human history, it’s a complex issue to address, Carlsson says. The global nature of supply chains can make the issue overwhelming, said fellow panelist Danielle Welsh-Rose, ESG investment director for the Asia Pacific at Aberdeen Standard Investments.
Brief: Hedge funds stepped up buying of technology shares during the Nasdaq 100’s first correction since March, once again warming up to the industry after trimming stakes. Professional managers that make both bullish and bearish equity bets scooped up internet and software companies on Friday and Tuesday at the fastest rate in five months, according to data compiled by Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s prime-brokerage unit. Meanwhile, hedge-fund clients at Morgan Stanley increased their exposure to growth and momentum stocks, styles dominated by tech companies, the firm’s data showed. Having taken a more neutral stance on tech as retail traders piled into the FAANG names and stay-at-home darlings like Zoom Video Communications Inc. and Peloton Interactive Inc., hedge funds took advantage of the Nasdaq 100’s three-day, 11% slump that chopped valuations from levels last seen 20 years ago. “They’re just riding the wave and believe that with interest rates low and inflation non-existent and with the Fed saying, ‘We’ll let it run a little hot,’ there’s more room to run,” said Chris Gaffney, president of world markets at TIAA Bank. “Is it a bubble and do we continue to inflate that bubble? I think that it can continue to inflate.”
Brief: New York is facing a glut of workspace as fear of COVID-19 has reduced the daily usage of office buildings to almost nothing, a devastating sign for a city already reeling from the highest unemployment rate among the largest U.S. cities. Manhattan’s density and sea of skyscrapers together hamper a return to the office on the island and that is unlikely to change until a vaccine allows the subway and elevators in office towers to run at full capacity. Just 8% of employees have returned to Manhattan offices as of mid-August, the Partnership for New York City, a non-profit of nearly 300 chief executives, found in a survey of major city employers. The real estate industry is the most aggressive in returning, with 53% already back, the partnership said. “The economy and people’s sense of their health go in lock step,” said Michael Cohen, president of the tri-state area at brokerage Colliers International Group Inc (CIGI.TO). “Until people feel safe enough to go back to the office, you can stand on one leg and spit nickels – they’re not going to revive this economy,” he said.
Brief: It’s been a tough year for executives across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia — especially for those in the healthcare sector. “To be completely honest, throughout the past six months most decisions have been exceptionally challenging,” said Dr. Ahmed Ezzeldin Mahmoud Abdelaal, chief executive of Cleopatra Hospitals Group, which operates six hospitals in the Cairo area in Egypt. In May, Dr. Ezzeldin was at the helm when the group converted two of its facilities into Covid-19 treatment and isolation centers. “The transition had to take place in a very short time frame and there was no room for error,” said Dr. Ezzeldin, who has been voted the No. 2 healthcare CEO in Institutional Investor’s 2020 Emerging EMEA Executive Team. First place in the healthcare sector went to MLP Care chief executive Muharrem Usta, who leads Turkey’s largest healthcare provider. Usta said the safety of his staff was a top priority at MLP, which has 30 hospitals in 16 Turkish cities and has been involved in the treatment and diagnosis of patients with Covid-19, as well as public health messaging.
Brief: Analysts at Goldman Sachs have forecast double-digit returns on high yield - also known as junk - emerging market bonds over next 12 months if the world gets over its coronavirus worries. “We continue to think EM HY sovereigns offer the best risk-adjusted total return opportunity: our 12m target of ~600bp for EM HY spreads (from ~730bp currently) implies double-digit total return potential,” Goldman said in a note on Thursday. The investment bank also forecast emerging market governments would issue at least $150 billion of dollar-denominated debt this year as they look to tackle the crisis, though it could be even higher.
Brief: JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) on Wednesday dismissed several employees who allegedly misused funds that were supposed to help businesses dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Financial Times reported, citing a person familiar with the situation. Individuals who fraudulently obtained loans under the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program had not been acting as JPMorgan employees, the person said. However, breaking the law was a violation of the bank’s code of conduct and some people were fired as a result of their improper EIDL applications, the person added. The lender found that some of its own staff had deposited suspicious EIDL funds in their Chase checking accounts, according to the report. Those cases accounted for a “very small” percentage of the total suspicious activity uncovered by JPMorgan, the person said. Reuters reported on Tuesday that the lender was probing employees who may have been involved in the misuse of funds intended for COVID-19 relief, citing an internal memo.
Brief: The U.K.’s biggest property funds for mom-and-pop investors that were locked at the peak of the coronavirus market turmoil have been given the all-clear to reopen. They aren’t rushing for the keys. Funds holding almost 12 billion pounds ($15.6 billion) of commercial real estate halted trading in March, leaving investors to just watch as office and shopping mall values headed south. Now, they have a choice: reopen and risk a wave of redemptions or stay closed and invite the wrath of investors. “As soon as funds open, money will leave, that’s undoubted,” said Ben Yearsley, investment director at Shore Financial Planning. “Honestly, I think most won’t reopen.” As the pandemic froze real estate markets in March, fund managers including Aviva Plc and Standard Life Aberdeen Plc were thrown a lifeline. An industry committee said most properties couldn’t be accurately valued, prompting a slew of freezes that prevented investors heading for the door. On Wednesday, that group said the uncertainty had sufficiently eased, heaping pressure on managers to re-open. Now, any failure by funds to reopen following their next valuations could be a signal they don’t have enough cash if redemption requests have piled up since their freezing. That’s despite many having relatively healthy cash buffers prior to the coronavirus crisis upending markets.
Brief: Coronavirus misinformation is infecting the unlikeliest of places: Wall Street research that investors rely on to trade in the financial markets. In an early August note to clients, an analyst at a research firm called Fundstrat Global Advisors, which distributes widely-read reports and analysis to investors, cited a series of tweets by an ophthalmologist named James Todaro who painted a rosy picture of the US population's potential for developing herd immunity to coronavirus. In a research note sent to clients on August 11th, Fundstrat co-founder Thomas J. Lee included four tweets Todaro sent the previous day. One of Todaro's tweets cited "growing evidence that T cell immunity allows populations to reach herd immunity once 10-20% are infected with SARS CoV-2," the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Todaro's claim is not supported by credible scientific research. In fact, Shane Crotty, an immunologist at the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, told CNN Business that Todaro's tweets are "dangerous" to public health. The presence of Todaro's tweets in a Wall Street research note suggests the campaign to downplay the virus championed by the president and his supporters is gaining traction. Todaro is one of the people who appeared in a viral video in July promoting hydroxychloroquine that Facebook and YouTube later removed because they said it was promoting misinformation.
Brief: The markets are in a “raging mania” and rising inflation is a big threat, investor Stan Druckenmiller said. Inflation could hit 5% to 10% in the next four to five years, Druckenmiller said Wednesday in a CNBC interview, adding that the Federal Reserve has created conditions that have sent valuations soaring. Deflation is also a risk, he said. “Everyone loves a party but inevitably after a big party there is a hangover,” he said. “We are in a raging mania.” Investors, however, in general don’t see much risk of higher inflation in the U.S., according to prices in the market for Treasury inflation-protected securities. The 10-year breakeven inflation rate derived from TIPS is just 1.7%, suggesting the risk that the Fed will miss its 2% inflation target over the next decade is higher than that of exceeding it. Periods of deflation have been preceded by asset bubbles, Druckenmiller said, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell “has created this massive asset bubble, so ironically he’s raised two tails” -- the risk of inflation and the risk of deflation. Druckenmiller said the odds of hitting the 2% target “have actually gone way down with the Fed activity.” U.S. stocks sold off in the last three trading days, with a drop in technology shares gathering speed as investors fled the names that fueled a historic five-month rally. Heading into Wednesday’s trading, the Nasdaq 100 Index was down 11% from its record high set last week. Traders have sought safety in haven assets, pushing Treasury yields lower and strengthening the dollar.
Brief: SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T) on Wednesday unveiled the building that will house its new WeWork-designed headquarters, in a long-planned move that comes just as the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide forces a shift away from office working. Tokyo Portcity Takeshiba’s biggest tenant will be SoftBank unit SoftBank Corp (9434.T), whose Chief Executive Ken Miyauchi told reporters at the unveiling that 60% to 70% of the wireless carrier’s employees are currently working remotely. Excess space can be opened up to other group companies, Miyauchi said. Some of these are currently renting space around Tokyo from office sharing firm WeWork, which SoftBank has taken control of globally following a series of missteps at the U.S. startup. The new development employs technology that supports social distancing, such as real time data on congestion at restaurants and SoftBank-developed robots for cleaning floors and making deliveries.
Brief: Hedge fund managers running a range of investment strategies rose again last month, with August’s gains capping the strongest five-month run for the industry in more than 20 years. The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index – an investable barometer of the broader hedge fund industry published by Hedge Fund Research – was up 2.67 per cent last month. In the five months since April, following Q1’s coronavirus meltdown, the index has surged 15.4 per cent - the strongest five-month total return for hedge funds since February 2000. That puts its index value to an all-time high of 15,093. Year-to-date, the index is now up more than 2 per cent since the start of 2020. HFR president Kenneth Heinz said the impressive run – which is also the third-strongest five-month recovery return from a drawdown trough since HFR’s inception in 1990 – comes despite continued coronavirus concerns globally, ongoing economic and social upheaval in the US, and political uncertainty surround the US election, and underlines the industry’s fortitude. August’s gains were fuelled mainly by equity-focused hedge funds, which rose 4.25 per cent last month, and are now up 4.63 per cent year-to-date.
Brief:
Goldman Sachs said Wall Street's top fear gauge is flashing a warning signal not seen in about two decades since the dot-com bubble burst in early 2000. The CBOE Volatility Index, also known as the VIX, is the market's best indicator of expected volatility in the next 30 days. When the stock market rises, ordinarily the index declines, and vice versa. A market that is steadily rising or falling has low volatility, but one in which rapid rises and falls follow in quick succession shows high volatility. A reading below 20% for the VIX means that the market is operating in a low-risk environment, while above 20 shows fear is picking up. A reading above 30 reflects heightened volatility. Goldman said this trend has been upended as both the benchmark S&P 500 and VIX index have been moving in tandem. This means that since the dot-com crash, the volatility index is at the highest it has been at a time when the S&P 500 is also at a peak since March 2000. "US equity markets have shown a strong 'vol up, spot up' pattern driven by single stock markets but influencing the VIX," Goldman analysts Rocky Fishman, John Marshall, and Rohith Medarametla wrote in a September 3 note, when the VIX stood at 26.6.
