Tag: Business and finance

THE teller at ICBC, China’s (and the world’s) biggest bank, ushers a new, well-heeled customer into a private room. It is not for VIP treatment but a stern warning. The customer wants to invest in products offering higher returns than a basic savings account. The teller fixes a camera on her and reels off a series of questions. Are you aware that prices can go down as well as up? Do you understand that the bank does not guarantee this product? Only when the customer has been recorded saying “yes” does she get her wish.

Some complain that these videotaped agreements, now mandatory at Chinese banks selling similar investment products, feel like interrogations. But for the financial system, they are a step away from the precipice. Banks have used such transactions to channel cash into off-balance-sheet loans, serving riskier corners of the economy. Firms with little lending expertise have also muscled into the same space.

The catch-all phrase to describe this is shadow banking. It is…Continue reading

THE decline of the conventional job has been much heralded in recent years. It is now nearly axiomatic that people will work for a range of employers in a variety of roles over their lifetimes, with a much more flexible schedule than in the past. Opinion is still divided over whether this change is a cause for concern or a chance for workers to be liberated from the rut of office life.

Is the shift really happening? Some figures from the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), released on June 7th, showed that only 10.1% of American workers were in “alternative employment” last year, a lower proportion than the 10.7% recorded in 2005. In contrast, a study of the British economy by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) shows that the self-employed sector has been growing, with the number of self-employed sole traders rising by 25% between 2007-08 and 2015-16.

These two measures are different. But getting a good statistical fix is not easy when the jobs are hard to define. The ecology of…Continue reading

Role model

IF THERE is a single example of how dramatically the regulatory environment has changed for American banks in the past 18 months, it may be the trickle of information that has recently emerged about an inquiry into their sales practices. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a banking watchdog, began it in 2016 after widespread malpractice was uncovered at Wells Fargo, one of the country’s biggest banks. It ended the inquiry quietly by writing to several banks on June 4th; it sent the letters to Congress on June 11th. The public learned of the probe only because of diligent reporting by American Banker, a trade publication which appears to have gleaned its information mainly from banking consultants.

The OCC responded to American Banker’s report by releasing enough information to suggest that some banks were guilty of at least minor jiggery-pokery. It confirmed as much in testy exchanges between…Continue reading

ON JUNE 13th the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point, the seventh such increase since it began shouldering rates away from zero in December 2015. Markets shrugged—a rather different reaction from the one that followed a policy adjustment made five years ago this month. The chairman then, Ben Bernanke, dared advise investors that the Fed might soon start winding down its stimulative bond-purchases. Traders fell to their fainting couches, but not before pausing to sell. Yields on ten-year Treasury bonds leapt. Currencies around the world flopped. This “taper tantrum”, as it became known, raised concerns that Fed tightening might so perturb global markets that America itself could suffer. Having survived both tapering and rate increases, Fed officials now seem inclined to dismiss such worries. They should not. The danger of a nasty Fed feedback loop remains.

Wise central bankers are prepared for ill winds blowing from abroad. Thanks to…Continue reading

ADE AYEYEMI’S office in Lomé, the capital of Togo, is a good place to think about crossing borders. Ghana is ten minutes’ drive away. From his window the boss of Ecobank can watch trucks rumble along the seafront, some bound for Burkina Faso, a day’s journey, or Mali, perhaps another day on. At night, cargo ships twinkle offshore. From here Ecobank’s vision—“to integrate the continent”, Mr Ayeyemi says—is clear. Whether it will be profitable is less obvious.

Ecobank was founded in 1985 by business leaders with backing from the Economic Community of West African States, a regional bloc. It has branches in 33 countries, more than any other African bank (see chart). It is not alone in its ambitions. Nigeria’s United Bank for Africa (UBA) wants to make half its profits elsewhere in the continent by 2022. South Africa’s Standard Bank recently opened in Ivory Coast, its 20th African country. Moroccan banks are trekking across the Sahara.

African bankers have long preached…Continue reading

IMAGINE the tale of Sisyphus, the mythical king doomed to spend eternity pushing a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down, retold by Kafka. The result would be very like the tortuous story of Andreas Georgiou, Greece’s former statistics chief.

Since 2011 Mr Georgiou has faced several criminal charges. One is that he inflated budget-deficit figures, forcing Greece to seek a bail-out and resulting in alleged damages of €171bn ($190bn). Another is that he violated his duty by failing to seek approval from the statistical agency’s board before sending the figures to the European authorities.

Although Mr Georgiou was acquitted several times on both charges, the acquittals were annulled and he was retried. In 2017 he was found guilty of a violation of duty. He has now learnt that the Supreme Court had rejected his appeal, rendering the conviction final. It carries a two-year suspended sentence. In May prosecutors said they were refiling the charges that he inflated…Continue reading

FOR a moment, the Group of Seven (G7) leaders attending their annual summit, in a mountain village in Quebec, looked like they had managed to paper over their differences with President Donald Trump and present a united front. They found just the right wording to secure American agreement on matters that never used to be in question, such as supporting democracy, abiding by international-trade rules and fighting terrorism. Even Mr Trump professed himself pleased, calling the summit wonderful and rating his relationships with other leaders as ten out of ten.

Yet barely ten minutes after the official communiqué was published, he changed his mind. He tweeted from somewhere over the Pacific, en route to his “mission of peace” in Singapore with Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s despotic ruler, that he had instructed his officials not to endorse the communiqué. He attacked Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister and host of the summit, for making “false statements” at his closing news…Continue reading

NOTE to travellers headed to a stag do: the festivities begin at your destination, not on the plane that is taking you there. This might seem obvious, but many revellers appear unsure. Last week, an easyJet flight from Bristol to Prague was delayed and ultimately cancelled after a group of stags got their celebration off to an early start. The details of their behaviour remain murky, but it led Bristol Airport police to tweet: 

Disappointing behaviour of a few who ruined a Friday flight from Bristol Airport, not just for their mates, but for the 140+ whose flight was cancelled as a result of their follow-up actions. It’s an aircraft—not a nightclub.

The airline clarified that the flight was delayed “due to a group of passengers…Continue reading

THE International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade association for airlines, was founded in 1945 to promote the interests of carriers around the world. In recent years the airline cartel of old has been accused of being out of tune with the times, particularly by low-cost carriers such as Ryanair, which is Europe’s biggest. At this week’s AGM in Sydney the message from IATA was as dated as the organisation itself: women were not suited to running airlines. Akbar al Baker, the group’s new chairman and the boss of Qatar Airways, a Gulf carrier, told attendees that “of course”, his airline “has to be led by a man, because it is a very challenging position”. He later apologised for what he claimed was a joke blown out of proportion by the media. Yet this was not Mr al Baker’s first foray into misogyny. Last year he mocked American carriers for hiring “grandmothers” as flight attendants, boasting that the average age of his cabin crew is 26 years. Until recently, he forbade female staff from marrying or getting…Continue reading

AFTER a plane crash, air-safety investigators are dispatched to the wreckage site to find out what went wrong and ensure it never happens again. Their financial counterparts have a similar job to do with the Indian government’s proposed sale of Air India. Mooted for nearly a year, the first round of preliminary bids ended on May 31st having attracted not a single offer.

Bureaucrats running the divestment process had expected many suitors. Domestic aviation is booming. Air India has a modern fleet, an enviable brand and valuable landing rights in many foreign airports. No fewer than 160 queries had come in from interested parties, said to include local and foreign airlines as well as Tata, a conglomerate. Might a bidding war ensue, some wondered?

Not quite. Bidders were seemingly never as keen as government leaks to the media suggested. For one, Air India came saddled with unwanted cargo in the form of 334bn rupees ($5bn) of debt. And a potential buyer would also be expected…Continue reading