Brief : As U.S. retailers celebrate a boom lifting one of the pandemic’s hardest-hit sectors, scars left by a year of bankruptcies and delayed vendor payments could threaten to undermine their recovery -- just as the crucial back-to-school shopping season begins. After watching their receivables mount last year, vendors of apparel and other goods demanded change. In order to ship, many began requiring payment upon delivery of the goods or even in advance, according to people with knowledge of the demands, which were made of distressed and healthy clients alike. For merchants, that’s a big cash drain at a time of great uncertainty. The shift comes after retailers spent much of last year delaying payments to preserve cash. Such maneuvers have long been used by struggling chains, but amid the pandemic, even more stable merchants like Macy’s Inc. and Gap Inc. followed suit. An analysis of company financial data showed such buyers took at least two weeks longer to pay their suppliers than the same period the prior year. Vendors are “shell-shocked” after a string of Covid-era bankruptcies left them with large losses, and more concerned about guaranteeing they’ll be paid, said Perry Mandarino, head of restructuring and investment banking at B. Riley. “Late payments are not being tolerated,” Mandarino said.
Brief: Financial institutions and their directors have to navigate a rapidly changing world, marked by new and emerging risks driven by cyber exposures based on the sector’s reliance on technology, a growing burden of compliance, and the turbulence of Covid-19, according to a new report Financial Services Risk Trends: An Insurer’s Perspective from Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS). At the same time, the behaviour and culture of financial institutions is under growing scrutiny from a wide range of stakeholders in areas such as sustainability, employment practices, diversity and inclusion and executive pay. “The financial services sector faces a period of heightened risks. Covid-19 has caused one of the largest ever shocks to the global economy, triggering unprecedented economic and fiscal stimulus and record levels of government debt,” says Paul Schiavone, Global Industry Solutions Director Financial Services at AGCS. “Despite an improved economic outlook, considerable uncertainty remains. The threat of economic and market volatility still lies ahead while the sector is also increasingly needing to focus on so-called ‘non-financial’ risks such as cyber resilience, management of third parties and supply chains, as well as the impact of climate change and other Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) trends.”
Brief: Many are predicting a bright future for biotech firms involved in the production of Covid-19 vaccines as they are rolled out across the globe, but US President Joe Biden’s proposal that vaccine producers should temporarily waive patent protection has dampened this rosy outlook and is likely to result in significant pushback from firms in the sector. On Wednesday (5 May), Biden announced his support for waiving intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines, bowing to increasingly pressure from within his own administration and other nations to help the rollout of the vaccine in less developed countries, such as India and South Africa. The news sent some pharmaceutical stocks plummeting. Moderna's stock was down 6.2% to $163 following the announcement while the Novavax share price fell 5% to $172, though Pfizer's stock price dropped only slightly. Healthcare shares in China were also affected by the news, with the CSI Health Care index falling nearly 4% to 15,727 points. Industry experts speculate that the decision was prompted in no small measure by Pfizer's Q1 earnings update, announced the same day, where it revealed it had recorded vaccine sales of $3.5bn in the first quarter of the year and expects full year sales of $26bn. As Jim Wood-Smith, CIO private clients & head of research at Hawksmoor Investment Management puts it, this situation raises "profound moral and financial problems".
Brief: Sculptor Capital Management’s flagship hedge fund is finally beginning to turn around. The firm’s multistrategy vehicle scored its first quarter of net inflows since 2014, marking the end of years of client withdrawals that totaled about $30 billion. The fund and its associated portfolios attracted a net $78 million of fresh cash, bringing total assets in those products to $10.9 billion as of March 31, the firm said in a statement Wednesday. The results, achieved in the last months of Chief Executive Officer Robert Shafir’s tenure, are a vindication of his promise and efforts to reverse the asset bleed. Last month, Chief Investment Officer Jimmy Levin succeeded him. Addressing the hedge fund inflows on Sculptor’s earnings call Thursday, Levin said that the new cash came from a broad range of investors. “It’s from all types of allocators all around the world: consultant-advised, non-consultant advised, institutional, non-institutional,” he said. “It’s been a bit of everything, which is why we described it as feeling healthy.”
Brief: Citadel Securities’ outsize role in the capital markers has gotten the attention of regulators. Gary Gensler, the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, honed in on Citadel in prepared remarks to be delivered to a Thursday hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, which is looking into the GameStop trading fracas in January. The GameStop debacle resulted in sharp price hikes in so-called meme stocks, leading to restrictions on trading by broker dealers and resulting in losses among hedge funds and retail investors alike. In the process, the trading frenzy also raised questions about market structure and those who benefit from it. Citadel Securities, a market maker, emerged as a key player in January’s market events because of its acknowledged role in buying order flow from Robinhood, a retail trading app, whose customers sent GameStop shares temporarily soaring from $20 to $480. Payment for order flow is a controversial practice and has been banned in Canada and the U.K. In the U.S., Robinhood has already settled one SEC enforcement action on the practice.