- In the United States, Pfizer plans to meet with officials from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after stating Covid-19 boosters will be needed within 12 months. US President Joe Biden’s Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci says it’s very possible that a booster shot will be needed in the future, but it is too soon for the government to make any recommendations. “Right now, given the data and information that we have, we do not need to give people a third shot,” he said. Other leading vaccine experts don’t necessarily agree with Pfizer, saying more data is needed to justify a booster shot.
- Reopening is the common theme across Canada, as more provinces loosen their pandemic restrictions. On Sunday, Saskatchewan became the second province, following Alberta, to scrap their remaining rules, meaning masks and physical distancing are no longer required. Premier Scott Moe says falling case numbers show that the province is in a good place. While masks are still mandatory in Quebec, the province will reduce the required distance between two people from different households to one metre. Sports venues are now allowed to accommodate up to 50 people indoors and 100 people outdoors, and the customer capacity for retail spaces will also increase.
- In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to announce the final step to reopening, the removal of all legal restrictions by July 19th. But Junior Health Minister Edward Argar says people will still be given “clear and strong guidance” about wearing masks, even as the restrictions loosen. “When we move to step four we will see the falling away of all legal obligations and legal restrictions towards personal and corporate responsibility,” he said. Covid-19 cases continue to soar in the UK, with case numbers reaching over 30,000 per day.
- In France, the country’s health minister says the delta variant will most likely become the new dominant strain. President Emmanuel Macron is expected to announce a new law requiring healthcare workers to get vaccinated. France’s top health advisory body made the recommendation on Friday, saying vaccines should be mandatory for anyone who comes into close contact with Covid-19. Although officials have warned of a new wave of infection, they say new lockdown measures aren’t likely. Approximately 40% of the population of France is vaccinated.
- New Zealand will operate repatriation flights for citizens who are in Sydney grappling with the latest Covid-19 outbreak. Air New Zealand said within fifteen minutes of being put up for sale, seats on all nine emergency flights had been sold out. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the government would make quarantine facilities available for approximately 1000 people, as passengers booked on the flights will have to quarantine for 14 days after arriving. New Zealand has had success at eradicating community spread of the virus, while Australia is currently fighting its worst outbreak in over a year.
- On Sunday Australia reported its first Covid-19-related death of the year and 77 new cases, a record number for 2021. State Premier Gladys Berejiklian says she expects cases will continue to rise in the coming days. “I’ll be shocked if it’s less than 100 this time tomorrow, of additional new cases,” she said. The recent outbreak in Australia has seen a total of 566 cases, the majority of them in and around Sydney. It is highly likely that the current three-week lockdown will be extended, as the country battles the highly infectious delta variant amid a slow vaccine rollout.
Covid-19 – Due Diligence And Asset Management
Cyber-attacks biggest threat to growth, warn financial services CEOs
Brief : Chief executives in financial services rank cyber-attacks as the greatest threat to future growth prospects – more than a pandemic or over-regulation – according to a PwC survey. Executives at some of the world’s biggest banks, insurers and asset managers were asked to choose from a list of potential business, economic, policy, social and environmental threats to growth. They ranked cyber-attacks top (56 per cent), followed by pandemics (51 per cent) and over-regulation (50 per cent). The prospect of financial institutions being subject to a cyber-attack has grown considerably in recent years. Only 33 per cent of CEOs considered cyber threats the biggest concern for their business five years ago in 2016.
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Strong Sovereign performance provides liquidity and stability to Governments through the pandemic
Brief: Invesco today released its ninth annual Global Sovereign Asset Management Study, which details the views and opinions of 141 chief investment officers, heads of asset classes and senior portfolio strategists at 82 sovereign wealth funds and 59 central banks, who together manage USD19 trillion in assets. With Covid-19 top of mind, impacting both operations and investment strategies, the impact of the ongoing pandemic is a major theme running throughout this year’s report. In response to Covid-19, governments rushed to implement policy measures designed to prop up their economies and public services such as health, as well as providing support for businesses and households at a time when tax revenues retreated with depressed economic activity.
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Pace of recovery rises in the world’s leading economies
Brief: The growth-cycle outlook is steadily increasing for the world’s leading economies with the gradual lifting of lockdown measures and progress in vaccinations, the OECD said. The organization’s Composite Leading Indicators, which tend to precede economic turning points by about six months to nine months, continue to expand for the group’s 38 members as a whole and in some large emerging-market economies. The OECD cautioned that despite the improvements in containing the spread of Covid-19, its measures should still be interpreted with care and may say more about the signal than the degree of actual economic growth.
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Business trips are coming back faster than expected in the U.S.
Brief : In-person conferences are back sooner than anticipated in the U.S., a sliver of good news for industries like airlines and hotels that are relying on corporate travel for a full recovery. About half of attendees at a large annual meeting of accountants are expected to make the trip to Las Vegas this month, substantially more than the organizers anticipated at the start of the year. And some conferences planned in the fall have a full pre-pandemic flavor, with almost all of the speakers and attendees planning to be on site rather than over Zoom. “We are offering digital-only tickets, but are expecting about 95% of our attendees to be in-person,” Jon Weiner, founder and chief executive officer of health-care conference HLTH, said via email. “Attendee sales are trending as they were for our last in-person event (2019) and sponsorships are selling out quick.” This year’s gathering takes place in Boston in October.
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Hedge fund managers who are mothers saw weaker performance during pandemic-related school closures.
Brief: Across industries, mothers bear the burden of household labor and childcare, a trend that translates into weaker performance at work compared to their male counterparts and other women without children. For mothers in the hedge fund industry, the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated these disparities. According to new academic research, on average, female managers with young children — aged 12 and younger — missed a 7 percent excess return compared to male-only funds during the months of pandemic-related school closures. This cost increased with the proportion of mothers in a firm. In contrast, fund performance was not significantly affected for managers who are fathers or women without children.
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