Tag: FINANCE

FEW banks can match the quaint serenity of Banco Delta Asia’s headquarters in Macau. Housed in a pastel-yellow colonial building opposite a 16th-century church, its entrance is flanked by tall vases, depicting sampan gliding between karst hills. In the tiled square outside, men laze under a banyan tree and an elderly woman peels a boiled egg for lunch.

But in 2005 this backwater bank incurred the wrath and might of the world’s financial hegemon. America’s Treasury accused it of laundering money for North Korea, prompting depositors to panic, other banks to keep their distance and the Macau government to step in. The Treasury subsequently barred American financial institutions from holding a correspondent account for the bank, excluding it from the American financial system.

Macau is over 8,000 miles from Washington, DC. But it is hard to escape the long arm of the dollar. Its dominance reflects what economists call network externalities: the more people use it, the more useful it…Continue reading

IN A British television show, “Doctor Who”, the titular character is able to travel anywhere in time and space in his Tardis police box. Given access to that technology, what useful message would this columnist impart to his previous self, nearly 12 years and 550 columns ago?

The first lesson would be to avoid confusing the economy with the financial markets. If you looked at share prices alone, you might assume the intervening period had been calm; the S&P 500 index is around double its level when this column began in September 2006. But though the markets have long since recovered their sangfroid after the crisis of 2008-09, the trend growth rate of developed economies has never regained its strength. That is a bitter irony given that the crisis originated within the financial sector, bringing to mind a teenager who crashes their parents’ car and leaves them with the bill.

In part, the market’s resilience was owing to the remarkable strength of corporate profits,…Continue reading

WITH the exception of a few governments big enough to run their own auctions, anyone wishing to issue bonds must seek bankers’ help. A hefty fee will buy assistance in calibrating the size, structure and timing of a bond issue, as well as connections to lots of buyers. And once a bank has agreed to underwrite an issue, it bears the risk of failing to get a good price for the bonds. But the process is old-fashioned and inefficient (the head of bond origination at one American bank jokes that “not a lot has changed since 1933”), and the accuracy of the advice is hard to gauge. Overbond, a financial-technology startup in Toronto, wants to change all that.

Investment bankers responsible for bond issuance still operate largely by feel, calling up asset managers to get a sense of demand, rather than by crunching numbers. Rules against insider trading mean they cannot talk directly with their trader colleagues. Data on existing bonds are more abundant. In America, for instance, information on the price,…Continue reading

Still pretty interesting

THE Indonesia Stock Exchange greeted its latest listing on May 9th: that of BRIsyariah, the Islamic arm of state-controlled Bank Rakyat Indonesia, the country’s biggest bank by assets. The initial public offering (IPO) of 27% of BRIsyariah’s equity raised around 1.3trn rupiah ($92m). Islam outlaws the payment of interest, the basis of conventional banking. Yet despite being home to an eighth of the world’s Muslims—225m, in a population of 260m—Indonesia’s Islamic banks are tiny. They account for just 5.8% of all banks’ assets. In neighbouring Malaysia, which has been promoting Islamic finance for many years, Islamic banks’ share exceeds 25%.

But Indonesia’s are growing fast. According to the Financial Services Authority (OJK), the industry’s supervisor, last year their assets rose by 19%, against 9.8% for conventional banks. BRIsyariah’s IPO will help tackle what the OJK says is the biggest obstacle to their…Continue reading

DIPLOMATS are racking up the air miles, but the prospect of trade war has not receded. Negotiations between American and Chinese representatives in Beijing ended on May 4th without agreement. Indeed, the two sides’ starting positions are so different that a mutually agreeable deal is hard to imagine. Talks will resume next week when Liu He, China’s vice-premier, travels to Washington. Negotiators will need to work quickly. From May 23rd America can impose its first set of tariffs against China, on around $50bn of goods. The Chinese would soon retaliate.

America is edging towards trade conflict not just with an avowed rival but with its closest friends. In March, when President Donald Trump announced plans for tariffs on steel and aluminium, America’s allies were granted temporary exemptions to allow time to negotiate deals. Those exemptions are due to run out on June 1st.

Many countries are already off the hook, having agreed to restrict shipments to America. South Korea…Continue reading

The way we were

THE words “Unite Students” are emblazoned on Aston University’s residence halls and on signs all over campus. They are the name of a firm that builds, buys and manages student accommodation across Britain. Last year Unite Students bought all 3,000 of Aston’s on-campus bedrooms for £227m ($313m) in partnership with the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, a sovereign-wealth fund. It was thought to be the largest ever one-off purchase of student housing.

Many readers will no doubt recall dingy halls of residence owned by universities, or squalid private digs owned by individual landlords. But student accommodation has got an upgrade. Private halls have sprung up as cash-strapped universities have outsourced to companies such as Unite. Some have grown into publicly traded brands offering thousands of beds across the globe. American Campus Communities owns more than 134,000 beds across America. Dubai’s GSA has student housing in…Continue reading

SCIENCE is supposed to be the ultimate meritocracy. People might sneer at a thinker’s background or training, but there can be no arguing with a powerful new idea which explains the world better than its rivals do. In reality, academia is cluttered with odd cultures and practices which serve as barriers to entry—and, at times, as cover for discrimination. In economics, men receive tenure at a rate 12 percentage points higher than women do, after controlling for family circumstances and publication records. Women who clear that hurdle are about half as likely as men to be named full professor within seven years. Just 4% of doctoral degrees in economics were awarded to African-Americans in 2011 (compared with about 8% across all academic fields). Something is broken within the market for economists, and the profession has moved only belatedly and partially to address it. A lack of inclusivity is not simply a problem in itself but a contributor to other troubles within the field.

Though women in…Continue reading

FOR a country that is hugely proud of its high-flying tech firms, China has a funny way of showing it. None of its internet giants—not Alibaba, nor Tencent, nor Baidu—is listed on the domestic stockmarket. Rules that were supposed to help investors have had the perverse effect of forcing firms to go public abroad, mostly in America. The result is that most people in China cannot buy stocks in the country’s biggest, most innovative companies. But change is finally at hand. In the coming weeks China is expected to start letting these firms list some of their shares at home. If handled well—a big if—it would be a boon for the young stockmarket.

China’s tech darlings initially went abroad because it was their only real option. Chinese regulations forbid dual-class shares, a structure favoured by tech entrepreneurs because it means they can raise capital while retaining control. Companies must also have three years of profits before going public. This is a stumbling block for tech…Continue reading

More like these, please

IN THE spring of 1991, Indian officials desperate to fend off a balance-of-payments crunch secretly airlifted 20 tonnes of gold confiscated from smugglers into the vaults of UBS, a Swiss bank. That crisis prompted liberalising reforms that helped integrate India into the global economy. By 2013 India’s exports as a percentage of GDP had nearly quadrupled, to over 25%, not far from the global average. But an exporting funk since then has pushed the figure to its lowest level in 14 years. Paired with a rise in imports, the trend has revived questions about the competitiveness of Indian firms—if not the government’s ability to finance a growing current-account deficit.

A repeat of the 1991 drama is not in the offing. India’s economy today is growing at a world-beating pace. Its central bank holds enough foreign reserves to pay for nearly a year’s worth of imports. Foreign investors are on hand to finance both government and corporate…Continue reading

ON MAY 8th, as the peso continued to tumble, Mauricio Macri, Argentina’s president, addressed his nation on television. His government had opened negotiations with the IMF for a credit line in order to “avoid a crisis like those we have faced before in our history”. That steadied the peso. But it also brought back painful memories for Argentines, highlighted doubts about Mr Macri’s approach to mending Argentina’s economy and cast a shadow over the reformist president’s future.

Argentines have bitter memories of the last time their government sought the IMF’s help. Many blame the fund for imposing austerity in return for loans and then pulling the plug in 2001, tipping their country into a devastating $82bn sovereign default. It was followed by widespread unemployment, a sharp rise in poverty and the corralito, in which the government froze bank accounts for a year to halt a run. Argentina’s economy had been battered by the lunatic policies of a succession of…Continue reading