Brief: Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, will freeze global hiring for “a few weeks,” a source familiar with the situation said on condition of anonymity. As the new coronavirus has swept across the globe, killing thousands of people, companies have cut their investment plans, withdrawn financial outlooks and laid off employees in response to the economic impact. With $7.4 trillion of assets under management as of December 2019, making it the world’s biggest investment manager, Blackrock’s hiring freeze underlines how painful the impact of the global market selloff and the coronavirus will be for the real economy. A spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Brief: Colony Capital, Inc. (NYSE: CLNY) (“Colony Capital” or the “Company”) today announced a number of updates in connection with the impact of COVID-19 on its assets and business operations… “Since our earnings call on February 28, 2020, the coronavirus has been declared a pandemic and has fundamentally altered the global economy,” said Thomas. J. Barrack, Jr., Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
Brief: Private equity firms are taking steps to help their portfolio companies survive the coronavirus onslaught of forced closures, scattered workforces and upended markets. From providing millions of dollars in emergency aid to more mundane things like phone calls designed to boost managers’ morale, professionals in buyout shops around the US are trying to ensure the new coronavirus doesn’t bring down their investments.
Brief: Back in February, Kevin Smith, chief investment officer at Crescat Capital, urged investors to resist the temptation to buy the dip as he pushed his “macro trade of the century. “We certainly did not predict the coronavirus,” he wrote at the time. “But it may prove to be the catalyst to tip this market [into] a brutal bear market….We are looking for a 56% drop from the top in February. That just gets us to a reversion to the mean for historical market valuation,” he told MarketWatch. “Honestly, we think a more reasonable target for this global recession that is only beginning is at least a 74% decline from February’s highs to mark the bottom. There were just too many excesses in this one. The purging... has only just begun.”
Brief: Billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio believes that policymakers and other leaders could be downplaying the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, a pandemic that he expects to result in “many trillions of dollars” in lost profits and “enormous” spending on relief efforts. “I believe that the health, economic, and market impact of the coronavirus will be much greater than most people are now conveying,” the Bridgewater Associates founder said in a LinkedIn post Wednesday evening. According to Dalio, the realities of the ongoing pandemic are “so bad that conveying them accurately could provoke panic.” To prevent that panic, he argued that “some leaders and knowledgeable researchers who are in the position to know are inclined to withhold the facts.”
Brief: Partners at the hedge fund and securities firms founded by Ken Griffin are donating$2.5 millionfor public schools and food insecurity relief efforts in Chicago as the effects of the coronavirus pandemic take hold. In early February, Citadel and Citadel Securitiesdonated$7.5 millionto help contain the virus in China. The money helped send medical supplies to a hospital in Wuhan, support humanitarian aid there and fund the development of a vaccine. The firm’s latest effort is in partnership with Chicago Public Schools and the Greater Chicago Food Depository. As of 3 p.m. Central Standard Time, there had been 422 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Illinois and four deaths.