Brief : The World Economic Forum has again pushed back its 2021 annual meeting in Singapore, rescheduling it for August from May given what it called “challenges in containing the pandemic”. The Geneva-based WEF, which last month delayed the event by 12 days in May, said on Wednesday it would now be held from Aug. 17-20. “Although the World Economic Forum and Government of Singapore remain confident of the measures in place to ensure a safe and effective meeting, and local transmission of COVID-19 in Singapore remains at negligible levels, the change to the meeting’s timing reflects the international challenges in containing the pandemic,” it said in a statement. Global travel restrictions have made planning difficult for an in-person meeting in the first half of the year, while differing quarantine and air transport regulations increased the lead time needed to ensure participants can join, it added. Singapore’s ministry of trade and industry said the government understood the challenges the WEF faced and had agreed to reschedule. The annual meeting typically takes place in January in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, but the pandemic made that impossible this year.
Brief: A $3 billion credit fund Centerbridge Partners began investing in March returned an annualized 90% in 2020, making it a top performer among vehicles designed to take advantage of pandemic-related price dislocations. As the pandemic took hold in the U.S., Centerbridge deployed $1.8 billion in funds following its special credit strategy, according to people with knowledge of the matter. It continued to invest additional money in beaten-down debt through year-end, the people added. The firm’s Special Credit III Flex Fund, which targeted consumer-facing industries battered by market turmoil, including rental cars, airlines, auto parts and entertainment, returned 121% on a gross basis, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private results. A representative for Centerbridge declined to comment. Centerbridge’s $1.3 billion flagship vehicle, the Special Credit III fund, gained a net 8.7% last year, the people said. The $28 billion private investment firm specializes in lending to and buying troubled companies, many of which are going through Chapter 11 restructurings. It recently became the owner of SpeedCast International Ltd. following the satellite communications company’s bankruptcy last year.
Brief: Three-quarters of UK fund buyers say all funds will soon incorporate ESG as sustainable investing gathers further momentum in the aftermath of Covid-19, new research shows. A CoreData Research study of 200 professional fund buyers around the world found nearly two-thirds (63 per cent) think all investment funds will incorporate ESG in five years. This proportion increases to almost three-quarters of respondents in the UK (73 per cent) and Europe (72 per cent). However, only half of fund selectors in North America (50 per cent) believe such a scenario will play out. The survey, conducted in November and December 2020, also shows that momentum towards ESG has accelerated since the pandemic. Six in 10 (60 per cent) global professional fund investors say they have increased their focus on ESG in the wake of Covid-19. The UK is leading the sustainability charge, with eight in 10 (81 per cent) raising their ESG commitment. But the picture is somewhat different in North America, where less than half (42 per cent) have upped their focus on ESG in light of the pandemic. A key factor driving the heightened ESG focus is a belief that sustainable investments can help deliver superior performance. Half (50 per cent) of global respondents say ESG funds tend to outperform their non-ESG counterparts — a sentiment most pronounced in the UK (65 per cent) and Europe (60 per cent). However, less than a third (31 per cent) of North American respondents share this conviction.
Brief: Kuwait’s government has transferred the last of its performing assets to the country’s sovereign wealth fund in exchange for cash to plug its budget deficit, after a political dispute over borrowing left one of the world’s richest nations short of cash and prompted Fitch to cut its outlook to negative. Fitch affirmed Kuwait’s AA rating but said “the imminent depletion of liquid assets” and “absence of parliamentary authorization for the government to borrow” was creating uncertainty. Its report follows S&P Global Ratings’ recent warning that it would consider downgrading Kuwait in the next six to 12 months if politicians fail to overcome the impasse. Though it’s a high-income country, years of lower oil prices have forced Kuwait to burn through its reserves. Desperate to generate liquidity, the government began last year swapping its best assets for cash with the $600 billion Future Generations Fund, which is meant to safeguard the Gulf Arab nation’s wealth for a time after oil. With those now gone, it’s not clear how the government will cover its eighth consecutive budget deficit, projected at 12 billion dinars for the fiscal year beginning April. The assets include stakes in Kuwait Finance House and telecoms company Zain, a person familiar with the matter said, asking not to be named because the information is private. State-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp., which has a nominal value of 2.5 billion dinars ($8.3 billion), was also transferred from the government’s treasury in January, the person said.
Brief: In a year when a pandemic gripped the world, beginning and experienced retail investors flocked to the stock market using taxable, non-retirement investment accounts, according to new research by the FINRA Investor Education Foundation (FINRA Foundation) and NORC at the University of Chicago. The study, Investing 2020: New Accounts and the People Who Opened Them, found that market dips that made stocks cheaper to buy and the ability to invest with small amounts were among the top reasons younger and inexperienced investors reported entering the stock market. For respondents who opened new accounts in 2020, investing for retirement was the most frequently cited reason for opening the account, despite the study’s focus on taxable investing. Researchers further found that the majority of new investors—meaning those who opened a non-retirement investment account for the first time during 2020—were under the age of 45 and had lower incomes than investors who already owned taxable investment accounts prior to 2020. New investors were also more likely to be racially or ethnically diverse.
Brief: The coronavirus crisis hasn’t stopped the world’s wealthy from flying -- they’re just increasingly doing it privately, and some are getting outsized returns from it. Bill Gates, Nassef Sawiris, James Packer and Kerry Stokes have accumulated more than $1.2 billion in the world’s largest operator of private-jet bases, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The company, Signature Aviation Plc, has recently become the focus of a takeover fight involving Blackstone Group Inc., Carlyle Group Inc. and Global Infrastructure Partners, helping its shares almost triple since a low in mid-March. Private flying is one of the few travel categories to have held up during the Covid-19 pandemic, offering the well-heeled the opportunity to jet off while minimizing potentially risky contact with other passengers. As global airline passenger traffic has plunged, private-jet activity has fared better and was at about the same level in the first three weeks of January as at the start of 2020, despite a resurgence of the virus, according to research from aviation data and consultancy company WingX. “Some clients only flew commercial before the pandemic, but Covid-19 has changed all of that,” said Michael S. Harris, director of family office at Verdence Capital Advisors, which oversees about $2.5 billion. “The way we travel may now have changed forever.”