Schroders to raise £250m for investment in Covid winners November 10, 2020 Schroders is set to raise £250m for a new investment trust preparing to float in London that will plug cash into companies that have prospered during the pandemic. Schroders British Opportunities Trust has earmarked 22 listed and private companies for fresh equity, including technology and healthcare firms that have fared well throughout the coronavirus crisis. [...]
Gearing up against greenwashers: investors seek clarity on sustainability terminology November 9, 2020 | City Talk A dearth of clear, agreed sustainability definitions present a challenge to investors looking to invest sustainably. This is according to the results of the Schroders Institutional Investor Study, which surveyed 650 institutional investors across 26 countries during April 2020. Gearing up against greenwashers Greenwashing is about falsely communicating the environmental benefits of a product or [...]
Five trends to watch in China’s consumer sector November 3, 2020 | City Talk As the world continues to try to contain the spread of Covid-19, China is among the few countries sustaining a return to normal activity. Restrictions on movement have been lifted and the government’s test and trace system has so far proven effective in containing new outbreaks. As a result, shops, restaurants and other services have [...]
Biden vs Trump: what are markets telling us? November 2, 2020 | City Talk With less than a week to go until the US presidential election, will Biden’s lead in the polls be enough to convince investors that Trump is poised for defeat? Many think not. After all, the polls notoriously got it wrong four years ago when Trump beat Hillary Clinton. For this reason, there has been heightened [...]
Institutions don’t share retail investors’ optimism on returns October 28, 2020 | City Talk Schroders’ studies suggest retail – or individual – investors are more optimistic about future returns than investors at large institutions. Individuals have indicated that they expect average annual returns of nearly 11% over the next five years while institutional investors anticipate a more moderate 6%. Schroders’ Institutional Investor Study is an analysis of views from [...]
Can behavioural finance explain how investors think about sustainability? October 27, 2020 | City Talk Schroders Global Investor Study 2020 examined the attitudes and beliefs of more than 23,000 investors on sustainability. It is a vast project that yields fascinating insights on the way investors think. We thought it would be interesting to put some questions to Stuart Podmore, Investment Propositions Director and an expert in behavioural finance, about the [...]
Which stock markets look cheap as we enter the final quarter of 2020? October 23, 2020 | City Talk While the virus itself hasn’t gone away, as far as financial markets are concerned, the pit of misery was back in March. At that point, a typical global market stock market portfolio had haemorrhaged around a third of its value in just six weeks. Stocks have soared As is often the case, peak despair turns [...]
What is the EU Green Deal and how might it impact business? October 21, 2020 | City Talk The EU Green Deal is a policy framework and package that aims to transform the European economy with the overarching goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050 and increasing ambition in existing emissions reduction targets. Announced in 2019, this multi-year project will create new and revamp existing policies, including the EU’s first ever Climate Law. [...]
Covid-19 and “stakeholder capitalism”: actions speak louder than words October 19, 2020 | City Talk The idea that companies should be run for the benefit of all their stakeholders, not just shareholders, is not new. “Stakeholder capitalism”, as it’s become known, was actually the dominant corporate model long before “shareholder primacy” (i.e. prioritising shareholders) really took hold in the Anglo-Saxon world in the 1970s. It remains the norm in some [...]
The maths of why growth companies are beating value October 14, 2020 | City Talk One of the side effects of low interest rates is that, because of the way that companies are valued, investors place a higher value on companies (and investment projects) which have a low probability, high payoff, a long time in the future. This helps explain why investors have been prepared to pay up for loss-making [...]