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Our briefing for Friday December 4, 2020:
Dec 4, 2020 3:14:18 PM
- In a wide-ranging interview on CNN Thursday, United States President Elect Joe Biden said as soon as he is sworn in, he plans to make masks mandatory on all federal property and interstate transportation. “The first day I’m inaugurated, I’m going to ask the public for 100 days to mask. Just 100 days to mask. Not forever, 100 days,” said Biden. Elsewhere in America on the COVID-19 front, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has accepted President Elect Biden’s offer to stay on at the White House as advisor on the coronavirus pandemic. “Absolutely, I said yes right on the spot,” said Fauci who has been serving in his role as director for more than 30 years.
- Fresh off the United Kingdom approving Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine this week, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during a news conference on Friday Health Canada regulators are “working around the clock” to complete their reviews. On Thursday, Major-General Dany Fortin, the man responsible for leading vaccination logistics in the country held a news conference stating he figures COVID-19 vaccinations will start in January. However, the initial supply will be limited with just three million Canadians expected to get shots in the first three months of 2021. The federal Liberal government has been getting hammered over the last several weeks by the opposition Conservatives for its inability to provide a timeline on when Canadians will receive their first inoculation of a COVID-19 vaccine. Canada has signed a vaccine deal with Pfizer, along with six other vaccine manufacturers.
- The United Kingdom has broadened their list of people who can be exempt from the usual 14-day coronavirus quarantine, starting on Saturday. Senior company executives and overseas executives will be among the “high-value business travellers” exempt from self-isolating. Other professionals in the performing arts, TV productions staff, journalists and recently signed elite athletes will also be exempt. Prior to this expansion, exemption was only limited to a handful of essential workers such as fruit pickers, the armed forces and technical staff working for utility companies. Business and tourism officials are praising the move, but details still need to be flushed out, such as how do people prove they are on a business trip and not just trying to skip out on self-isolating.
- In Sweden, health officials are admitting they need to do more to convert vaccine doubters in their country if they are going to achieve herd immunity. According to a recent Novus poll, only 46% of Swedes want to be vaccinated while 26% don’t. Herd immunity comes when enough people in a community have developed immunity either through being infected or vaccinated. For COVID-19, the percentage is estimated to range from 55% to 82%. Sweden was one of the few countries that avoided a lockdown during the first wave with its health officials hoping enough people would develop antibodies to protect against new outbreaks. However, the second wave of the coronavirus has hit the country hard, which means more needs to be done to convince the population to get vaccinated once the time comes.
- Following a visit by the Chinese Vice-Premier to two drug companies that produce COVID-19 vaccines and the national agency that oversees them in Beijing, mass production is expected to happen soon. The problem is this: the vaccines being produced by the China National Biotech Group (CNBG) and Sinovac Biotech are both still in their clinical trials and efficacy data has yet to be released. “We must be prepared for large-scale production and in strict accordance with quality supervision and biosafety requirements and regulations. Emergency use for high-risk groups such as port workers needs to be completed this year,” Vice-Primer Sun Chunlan was quoted as saying during her visits.
- The Financial Times is reporting Australia and New Zealand companies are facing growing pressure from investors and politicians after handing out multimillion-dollar bonuses and dividends while receiving public money to help through the coronavirus pandemic. In a recent call by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for companies “to do the right thing”, more than 17,000 businesses returned $524 million NZD since their performance was better than expected during the pandemic. In Australia, investors are using their voting power to pressure boards to withhold bonuses and dividends if they accepted government support.
Covid-19 – Due Diligence And Asset Management
Citi CEO Says Long-Term Productivity May Suffer With Remote Work
Brief: Citigroup Inc.’s Michael Corbat said he’s worried about potential long-term negative effects after many of his employees spent the vast majority of 2020 working from home. “People talk about the productivity that comes with working remotely,” Corbat said in a televised interview for a Bloomberg Invest Talks event that aired Friday. “Well, if I worked seven days a week, 15 to 16 hours a day and I don’t take any holidays, at least for a period of time I’m going to be more productive.” While more remote work will probably mean Citigroup can shrink its real estate footprint, Corbat said he’s hesitant to declare a widespread shift toward the practice. The CEO said in May that, unlike some of his competitors, he wasn’t considering the option of letting workers stay at home permanently after the pandemic ends. The New York-based bank, which has about 200,000 employees worldwide, wants to see how productivity changes over longer stretches of time and whether creativity suffers before deciding how much working from home to allow, Corbat said. Citigroup and many of its competitors have kept the vast majority of staff home for much of the year to help stem the spread of Covid-19. Now, as governments around the world rush to procure vaccines and promising new therapies for the virus, many companies are developing plans for eventually bringing workers back.
Airlines Try COVID-19 Tested Transatlantic Flights to Build Confidence
Brief : KLM, the Dutch arm of Air France-KLM, on Friday said it would begin offering COVID-19 tested flights to Atlanta, the latest example of a European airline adopting a testing strategy to increase passenger confidence in flying amid the coronavirus pandemic. The plans centre around the concept of conducting multiple tests so that travellers can have more trust that the chances they or others are carrying the virus during their voyage are small. Under the KLM plan, passengers receive one test five days before their flight, another shortly before the flight, and a third after landing. “Only passengers with negative test results will be accepted on-board,” KLM said in a statement. After testing negative again upon arrival at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, U.S. and European Union passengers travelling from Atlanta will be able to skip a 5-day quarantine in the Netherlands. Alitalia announced a similar scheme for Rome to New York flights earlier on Friday, and Delta last week introduced one from Atlanta to Rome. Delta, Air France and Alitalia cooperate under the “SkyTeam” airline alliance.
Sustainable Investing is in Vogue Among Wealthy Asians in the Covid-19 World Even if Questions Linger Over Potential Payback
Brief: Asia’s richest expect sustainable investing to accelerate after the Covid-19 pandemic, even if questions remain whether these will generate higher returns than putting money elsewhere, according to a study by Lombard Odier, one of Switzerland’s oldest private banks. Ultra high net worth individuals (UHNWI) in Asia, those with a net worth of at least US$30 million, showed strong interest in sustainability as an investment consideration going forward, a trend which has been accelerated by the Covid-19 situation, said Vincent Magnenat, chief executive for Asia at Lombard Odier, in an interview. “Sustainability has been accelerated by the Covid situation, by what we are going through,” said Magnenat. “At the same time, investing in companies with an emphasis on sustainability will be a factor of higher return in the coming years.” Lombard Odier’s report focused on four areas – technology, investment, sustainability and family services – and surveyed more than 150 UHNWIs in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand.
15 Days of 102 Fever, a Cracked Tooth From Chattering – ex NYSE Chief Shares his Covid Ordeal
Brief: Tom Farley, former president of the New York Stock Exchange, on Friday detailed his battle with Covid-19 early in the pandemic, telling CNBC “it was not a good period in my life.” “I had a 102 to 103.5 [degree] fever for 15 days straight, and then I couldn’t get out of bed for another week. I lost about 25 pounds,” Farley, who is in his mid-40s, said on “Squawk Box.” “I looked like Skeletor, cracked a tooth from chattering,” he said, referencing the Mattel supervillain from the Masters of the Universe franchise. “I felt like somebody was taking a sledgehammer to my back.” Farley, who oversaw the NYSE from 2014 to 2018, said he had his “nasty case” of Covid in March. At the time, he said his special purpose acquisition company was in the process of finalizing a deal with a merger target while the uncertainty caused by the fledging pandemic unsettled global financial markets. “It was at the exact time the S&P seemed to go down like 5% a day,” said Farley, whose first SPAC completed its merger in August with Global Blue, a Swiss fintech firm. He now serves as the company’s chairman. “My brain wasn’t firing. I was physically exhausted. It was not a good period in my life,” Farley said. “On that 23rd day, I woke up and yes, I was weak, but I felt better and I felt hopeful and optimistic, and I started getting into a workout routine.”
European Banks Warned by ECB to Avoid Letting Bad Loans Pile Up
Brief: The European Central Bank urged the region’s big banks to do a better job scrutinizing companies’ ability to repay loans and weather the pandemic, warning them of the possibility that a mountain of loans eventually sours, weighs down the banking industry and slows the economic recovery. In a letter to banks’ chief executives, the ECB’s supervisory arm said it is increasingly important for banks to assess these risks now instead of waiting until it is too late when problematic loans build up on balance sheets. Lenders have been buoyed by unprecedented amounts of support from authorities over the pandemic. They’ve also benefited from regulatory flexibility on delaying provisions for doubtful loans. How some banks have been accounting for those loans has varied. “We have been observing differences in credit risk management approaches,” Elizabeth McCaul, ECB supervisory board member, said in an accompanying blog post. Areas of concern included overly optimistic assumptions and some “worrying cases” where banks have relaxed their risk-modeling standards. “If we delay – or worse, fail to act – we will have to pay the price of today’s inaction tomorrow,” she wrote. “We would be wise to start preparing now so that we may enjoy the strongest possible conditions when those healthier days arrive.”
Haidar Hedge Fund That Surged on Virus Slumps on Vaccine
Brief: The raging global pandemic helped hedge fund manager Said Haidar make more than 25% during the market turmoil in March. Vaccines that could end the crisis have now erased those gains. His Haidar Jupiter macro hedge fund slumped 23.5% in November, its biggest monthly decline since starting more than two decades ago, as bets against stocks suffered in a global market rally, according to a letter to investors seen by Bloomberg. “We were caught off guard by a series of vaccine announcements in rapid succession, with much higher efficacy rates and highly expedited approval, manufacturing, and distribution timetables than earlier guidance suggested,” New York-based Haidar wrote to clients. The losses mark a dramatic reversal for one of the best-performing hedge funds in the world this year. The fund, which had gained as much as 68% through August this year, is now up 15.5%. That’s still better than the 0.4% seen through October by peers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. A spokesman for Haidar Capital Management, which managed close to $900 million in assets earlier this year, declined to comment. The fund has now made adjustments to its portfolio to benefit from a potential early end to the pandemic and a strong global economic rebound, the letter said.
