Brief: Goldman Sachs Group Inc is working on a strategy to gradually return staff to working in offices worldwide, the bank’s chief executive told staff on Tuesday in an internal memo viewed by Reuters. Goldman Sachs staff in Hong Kong, mainland China, Sweden and Israel have already started returning to work in phases, according to the memo, which was verified by a Goldman spokeswoman. “However, in certain cities, such as New York and London, it will take longer before we start to slowly increase the number of people in our offices,” stated the memo, which was signed by Chief Executive Officer David Solomon, President John Waldron and Chief Financial Officer Stephen Scherr.
Brief: The thought of a single banker spilling company secrets on a personal phone is a compliance worker’s worst nightmare. The Covid-19 lockdown and the sudden surge in makeshift home-working setups has multiplied those fears by hundreds of thousands. The coronavirus outbreak is taking its toll on the City’s compliance workers tasked with tracking the behaviour of employees scattered throughout the UK. The crisis has placed huge pressure on already stretched financial services compliance teams to get the right systems and controls in place. And it’s reigniting old tensions with bankers in the front line. Financial News spoke with several senior compliance officers and traders. All asked to remain anonymous to avoid a backlash from their colleagues or regulators.
Brief: Sycamore Partners was all set to acquire a majority stake in Victoria's Secret. For the lingerie brand's parent company L Brands, it was all part of the plan to spin off one of its most recognizable properties.But now, after a global pandemic and a lawsuit filing, the deal with Sycamore has officially fallen apart, according to a statement retail holding company L Brands sent out Monday In a statement sent to Business Insider, L Brands announced that it had come to a "mutual agreement" with Sycamore to "terminate" the company's previously agreed-upon sale of Victoria's Secret. Private equity firm Sycamore Partners had previously been interested in acquiring a 55% stake in the apparel and lingerie brand for $525 million. The private equity firm valued Victoria's Secret at $1.1 billion in February.
Brief: The market convulsions caused by the coronavirus pandemic and efforts to halt its spread might offer some answers to one of fund managers’ biggest questions: What’s the affect on financial performance of investing in companies that make a positive contribution to society and the environment? Allianz Global Investors, which oversees about $615 billion for clients, offered some insights with an analysis of how its sustainable and responsible investment mutual funds performed. The asset manager reviewed the “downturn resilience” of its funds and found that the vast majority of its sustainable strategies outperformed broad market benchmarks in the first quarter. In the past decade, fund managers who consider environmental, social and governance issues alongside regular financial metrics have gone from outliers to the mainstream with more than $30 trillion of assets now managed using a broad definition of the ESG approach.
Brief: Hong Kong’s wealth fund suffered a HK$86.1 billion ($11 billion) loss in the first quarter, its biggest ever, as stocks tumbled globally. The Exchange Fund, managed in its current form by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority since 1998, lost HK$111.5 billion on its portfolio of domestic and foreign stocks, while bonds gained HK$54.4 billion in the quarter, according to a presentation by HKMA Deputy Chief Executive Howard Lee to lawmakers Monday. The HK$4 trillion fund acts as a backstop to ensure the stability of Hong Kong’s currency and as a stabilizer in times of crisis. It joins other funds around the world in posting losses at the start of the year as markets tumbled due to the coronavirus outbreak. The MSCI global stock index slumped 22% in the first three months of the year. The fund clawed back some losses in April, seeing gains of about HK$30 billion to HK$40 billion, according to Lee.
Brief: Michel Andre Heller is looking to lend when credit is tight. The London-based real estate adviser to a billionaire family from the Middle East is lining up deals of as much as 5 million pounds ($6.2 million) for U.K. residential developments and more than double that amount alongside other investors for bigger properties, such as hotels or offices. The private debt market “is more than trickling along for us,” Heller said. “From a family office perspective, you don’t want to take on too much risk, but you still want to deploy capital.” As the coronavirus upends financial markets, family offices with money to spend are boosting private debt and credit holdings to take advantage of cheaper valuations and avoid the volatility of stock markets. Meanwhile, central banks are keeping economies afloat with cheap-money policies and negative yields, making assets that used to preserve and grow family fortunes less effective.