How have sustainable companies performed during the Covid-19 crisis? May 5, 2020 | City Talk Rather than being a luxury or an optional extra, our analysis shows that a focus on sustainability would have helped relative performance during the recent market turbulence. Here at Schroders, our view of sustainable investing is that companies who treat their stakeholders fairly will see better share price performance than those who do not. There [...]
Hunting shafts of light amid coronavirus’s economic gloom May 1, 2020 | City Talk The coronavirus pandemic will cause world GDP to shrink by about seven per cent during the first half of the year – roughly double the scale of contraction seen during the global financial crisis. That is the headline finding from Oxford Economics’ April/May 2020 ‘World Economic Prospects’ report. The number is shocking but unsurprising given [...]
First-hand account: my observations on China’s return to work May 1, 2020 | City Talk Emerging markets analyst Shuyu Gao provides a personal account of virus containment measures on her return to China, and reviews the recovery in activity. Amid the global spread of Covid-19, with lockdowns necessitating working from home more broadly, I decided to return to China and work from my family home in Nanjing. At the time, [...]
A new economic era beckons after this crisis April 29, 2020 | City Talk Current events likely mark a turning point in economic policy and the end of a 40-year spell of free market capitalism. Nobody can know how long the Covid-19 crisis will last, but I think that regardless of this it will mark a profound long-term change in economic policy. It is likely a turning point in [...]
Economies in free fall as hopes fade for a V-shaped recovery April 28, 2020 | City Talk Amongst the arguments about a lack of protective clothing for health workers and whether governments were too slow to react to the spread of Covid-19, the latest figures show that the pandemic is gradually coming under control. The rate of growth in new infections and fatalities around the world is slowing and the curves are [...]
What’s happening to dividends and what next? 11 questions answered April 23, 2020 | City Talk Nick Kirrage, co-head of the Value team, and Sean Markowicz, part of the Research and Analytics team, chatted with us about the future of dividends and buybacks. With so many investors reliant on dividends to boost their income or support their retirement we wanted know what’s happening now, whether investors should be concerned and what [...]
Non-Standard Finance bolsters finances by focusing on debt collection April 23, 2020 Non-Standard Finance is focusing on its collection activity after cutting lending across its divisions during the coronavirus pandemic. In a statement today, Non-Standard Finance said it would delay full-year results because of coronavirus. It maintained its collections performance had been robust despite the circumstances. Last month the firm cut lending across its divisions to mitigate [...]
Johanna Kyrklund: It pays to be patient April 22, 2020 | City Talk As lockdown continues for millions of us across the world, unsure of when we will see loved ones or return to our places of work, we all know we must be patient. Good things come to those that wait, as they say. This seems to me to be true not only from a personal viewpoint, [...]
Good vs. bad active fund management: three indicators April 21, 2020 | City Talk Do you ever wonder whether your active fund is worth the management and performance fees you charge? Would passive investments have yielded similar or better outcomes for your clients? If you haven’t asked yourself these questions, you can be sure your clients have asked themselves. And they will continue to, measuring what you deliver with [...]
European regulators scrutinise investment fund liquidity sparked by sell-off April 20, 2020 Asset managers across Europe are coming under increased scrutiny as regulators ask for new information about their ability to meet investor withdrawals. The French and German financial regulators are asking for daily updates of investor redemptions as they seek to stave off a liquidity crunch sparked by the coronavirus-induced market sell-off. It comes after investors [...]