Brief : The guardians of the global economy this week implored governments to act to avoid a two-speed rebound where vaccinated, rich nations recover more strongly from the pandemic than poorer countries languishing under the burden of disease and debt. The International Monetary Fund said that it sees the U.S., as well as China, as the locomotive for global economic growth. The world’s largest economy, fueled by trillions of dollars in stimulus spending, is expected next year to surpass its pre-pandemic projected level of output. But many emerging and developing economies, struggling with slow growth and mountains of debt, will take much longer. The central theme of the IMF’s virtual spring meetings with the World Bank was “giving everyone a fair shot” -- a slogan that underlined both concerns about inequality and the importance of speeding up the distribution of vaccines globally.
Brief: Hedge funds have made their strongest first-quarter start in more than 20 years, gaining more than 6 per cent in the three-month period to the end of March, with returns powered by a mix of successful calls on deep value equities amid accelerated volatility, renewed economic optimism, and soaring cryptocurrencies. Hedge Fund Research’s main Fund Weighed Composite Index, a global, equal-weighted benchmark of some 1400 single-manager hedge funds, advanced 6.08 per cent in Q1, following a 1.02 per cent gain in March. The March gain proved to be its sixth consecutive monthly rise, with Q1 its best opening quarter since 2000, and the index’s fifth-best opening quarter on record. HFR president Kenneth Heinz said deep value, event-driven equities, coupled with credit strategies – including traditional credit arbitrage exposures – and cryptocurrencies have helped fuel industry gains lately, as performance dispersion between winners and losers continues to narrow. Overall, event driven hedge fund managers led the pack, gaining 1.85 per cent in March to put their first quarter return at 8.21 per cent.
Brief: As U.S. business aviation traffic rebounds to pre-pandemic levels, a niche, fragmented industry providing services ranging from hangars to fueling is drawing interest from private equity funds and infrastructure investors. Fixed base operators, or FBOs, play a key role in keeping private jets flying, offering services like hangars and fueling, and some buyers are betting the revival in flights could spill over into allied industries. While business jet orders and deliveries dropped in 2020, private flights, which carry smaller groups and promise wealthy passengers less risk of exposure to the coronavirus, have generally fared better than commercial. That is underpinning investor interest in FBOs. The sector recently made headlines when Gatwick Airport owner Global Infrastructure Partners joined forces with Blackstone and Bill Gates’ investment vehicle to make a $4.73 billion offer for Signature Aviation, the largest private jet services firm. There are other deals brewing too. Macquarie Infrastructure Corp has said it is seeking buyers for Atlantic Aviation, the second-largest FBO network, for a deal by year’s end.
Brief: Enough vaccines have now been administered to fully vaccinate about 5 per cent of the global population — but the distribution has been lopsided. Most vaccines are going to the wealthiest countries. As of Thursday, 40 per cent of the COVID-19 vaccines administered globally have gone to people in 27 wealthy nations that represent 11 per cent of the global population. Countries making up the least-wealthy 11 per cent have gotten just 1.6 per cent of COVID-19 vaccines administered so far, according to an analysis of data collected by the Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker. In other words, countries with the highest incomes are vaccinating 25 times faster than those with the lowest. Bloomberg’s database of COVID-19 vaccinations has tracked more than 726 million doses administered in 154 countries. As part of our effort to assess vaccine access around the world, the tracker has a new interactive tool measuring countries by wealth, population and access to vaccines.
Brief: Initially sideswiped by Covid-19 in early 2020, private credit markets began to bounce back by year’s end, leaving dealmakers optimistic that private credit might fully rebound in 2021. According to a new survey of 112 private credit industry professionals conducted in February, 91 per cent of investors and 80 per cent of lenders surveyed expect deal flow to increase this year and are optimistic about several deal categories and sectors. For the 2021 Private Credit Survey Report, Katten surveyed an almost-equal weighting of lenders and private equity investors. Those surveyed represent a variety of sectors (including financial services, information technology, consumer staples, communications, industrials and health care) about their outlook on deal flow, readiness to address the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) phaseout and other issues critical to the private credit industry.
Brief: The research output of equity analysts went up dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic — but the accuracy of their forecasts went down, according to a new study from the University of London’s Cass Business School. Compared to the pre-pandemic months, analyst forecasts for company earnings per share, or EPS, increased by 72 percent in March 2020, indicating that sell-side analysts’ “initial response to pandemic-induced market uncertainty is to increase their provision of information,” according to the study’s author Pawel Bilinski, director of the Centre for Financial Analysis and Reporting Research at Cass. For other forecasts, such as revenue, cash flow, and dividend estimates, Bilinksi uncovered a similar pattern. The number of revenue forecasts increased by 80 percent in March, while cash flow forecasts jumped 59 percent and dividend estimates grew by 11 percent, according to the paper. The study was based on over 400,000 EPS forecasts and revenue, cash flow, and dividend estimates made by sell-side analysts from January 2018 to November 2020. The increase in research activity came as the Covid-19 pandemic sent a series of shock waves rippling through the global economy, creating an uncertain and volatile market environment.