Brief : Most financial firms and institutions signed up to a UK finance ministry backed charter met their 2020 targets for women in senior management as those who fell behind blamed hiring freezes due to COVID-19, a review said on Wednesday. The fourth annual review from think tank New Financial for Britain’s finance ministry, said the Women in Finance Charter faced its biggest test yet after the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020. Over 70& of the 209 signatories, including the finance ministry, have met their self-imposed targets, or were on track to meet future targets, the review said. Just over 60% of the signatories have set a target of at least 33% of female representation in senior management. A group of 81 firms were due to hit their target by the end of 2020, but 44 of them failed to do so, citing deliberately ambitious targets, and recruitment or promotion freezes due to COVID, the review said.
Brief: New York City is reopening, vaccinations are accelerating and spring brings with it an air of optimism. For Wall Street’s banks, that means a return to offices may finally be in sight. At JPMorgan Chase & Co., hundreds of interns are set to work in the lender’s New York and London offices in the coming months. Citigroup Inc. is providing workers with rapid COVID tests as it sketches out its plans to safely return people to its buildings. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has said it hopes to have more employees back by summer. One year after Wall Street sent employees home in droves to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the prospects of a broad return are starting to get clearer -- and not a moment too soon for some companies in the industry. From Zoom fatigue to the exhaustion of jobs colliding with home life, many bankers say the strains of long-term remote work are growing for bosses and underlings alike. There are exceptions, and signs of growing flexibility as companies such as Apollo Global Management Inc. consider hybrid models. But as other industries look at dramatically reshaping work in a post-COVID world, the stance of New York’s financial giants is clear: Employees should be at offices. It’s just a matter of how quickly -- and safely -- their leaders can get them there.
Brief: Travel spending by Americans plunged by 42%, or $492 billion, in 2020, according to a report by an industry group, amid social, travel and business restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19. The U.S. Travel Association said the industry shed 5.6 million direct and indirect jobs last year, and the decline in travel dragged down total economic output to $1.5 trillion, from 2019’s $2.6 trillion. U.S. tax revenue collected from travel plummeted by $57 billion in 2020. “While the gradual progress of vaccinations has provided hope that a turnaround may be on the horizon, it is still unclear when travel demand will be able to fully rebound on its own,” said U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Roger Dow. As millions of Americans get vaccinated and travel destinations begin to reopen, the industry is optimistic that demand will return this spring. Disney said Wednesday its California theme parks will reopen April 30.
Brief: Consumers have $1.8 trillion in extra cash to spend. That increase in disposable income since the beginning of the pandemic — combined with the Federal Reserve’s promise to keep interest rates low — is why Howard Marks, co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, is feeling pretty optimistic about the economy. “A related positive to consider is that market tops usually occur with the economy several years into the up-leg of the cycle and vulnerable to recession,” Marks wrote in a new investor letter. “This time, however, we have strong markets at the beginning of what may prove to be a long economic recovery.” In this latest memo, Marks focused on how the markets behaved in 2020 and what investors should do this year. This included addressing the disappointingly brief window in 2020 to buy assets at huge discounts, investors’ fears of missing out, and re-energized buying after the initial market downturn in March. All that led to the market hitting new highs later in the year, he said.
Brief: Investors trapped in suspended open-ended property funds have paid out more than £40m in management fees over the course of 2020, with some still paying fees in 2021 as £2.8bn of investor capital remains locked away across three funds. According to Investment Week calculations utilising fee and fund size data from Morningstar Direct and share class classifications from FE fundinfo, investors have shelled out approximately £40m in management fees across nine suspended property funds over the course of 2020, with the total figure likely larger than this, as data for St James's Place, Aviva Investors and Canlife's property funds were unavailable. The costs calculated only apply to the management fees of the fund, with various other fees such as property, transaction and dealing costs that comprise the total ongoing charge not included. From Morningstar Direct, the fees were taken from the firm's MiFID files and total fund size was based on "surveyed figures obtained from the firm" on a month-to-month basis. Main share classes have been selected according to the methodology employed by FE fundinfo.
Brief: HSBC Holdings Plc’s main Hong Kong office was closed until further notice after three people working in the building tested positive for COVID-19 amid a renewed wave of infections among the city’s business and expatriate community. The Center for Health Protection has published a formal notice requiring visitors who stayed at the building for more than two hours between March 3 and 16 to undergo a mandatory test at a government-approved center by March 19, according to an internal memo. The move means staff and customers will have no access to the lender’s biggest branch in the city. “It is our understanding that HMB can return to normal business when virus testing of colleagues and deep cleaning of the facility are complete,” HSBC wrote in the memo distributed on Wednesday. “The exact timing is yet to be confirmed.” In a statement, a spokeswoman for HSBC said the bank is following the guidelines from the authorities and taking all necessary measures to reopen as soon as practicable. “For banking services, we have well-developed contingency measures that ensure our services and critical processes continue to be maintained,” she said.