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Aussie super funds ramp up climate investing efforts
October 22, 2020--Following the launch of a new initiative, funds like Cbus and Australian Ethical explain how they are working to reduce their portfolio emissions and engage with investee companies.
Following last week's launch of 'Climate League 2030', an Australian investor-led emission-reduction initiative, superannuation funds and other institutions have outlined how they are allocating capital and ramping up their activity on this front.
The initiative is driven by 16 institutional investors with combined assets under management of A$850 billion ($596 billion) and was instigated by the Sydn...
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Source: asianinvestor.net
Engines Not Yet in Sync: A Multispeed Recovery in Asia
October 21, 2020--The Asia-Pacific region is recovering from its worst recession in living memory. Our latest Regional Economic Outlook shows that a recovery started in the third quarter, but growth engines are not all firing with the same power across countries, leading to a multispeed recovery.
Reflecting worse-than-expected outturns in the second quarter in a few countries,the IMF's forecast for the region has been downgraded to -2.2 percent in 2020-the worst outcome for this region in living memory. India’s economy experienced a much sharper than expected contraction in the second quarter-24 percent on a year-over-year basis-and is expected to recover slowly in the coming quarters. China,which suffered the pandemic's blow earlier than other countries, has seen a strong recovery after the first quarter lockdown, and growth has been revised up to 1.9 percent this year, a rare positive figure in a sea of negatives. Advanced economies (Australia, Korea, Japan and New Zealand), while still in recession, are expected to do somewhat better than expected in 2020, reflecting a faster pickup in activity following earlier exit from lockdowns.
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Source: IMF
Old Age Is the Next Global Economic Threat
October 20, 2020--Japan's deflation is a warning to other countries with swelling elderly populations.
While the world wrestles with a deadly pandemic and how to confront climate change, there's another, long-term global challenge that no one really knows how to deal with: population aging.
As the human race transitions from a burgeoning, exploding species to a static or shrinking one, economies around the world will come under significant strain.
Japan is the canary in the coal mine here. Although its birth rate is not as low as that of many other rich countries, it's been low for a longer time. That's why Japan is now the world's oldest major economy:
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Source: bloomberg.com
Investors bet on the resilience of India's rural economy
October 19, 2020--India has been among the countries hardest hit by coronavirus pandemic with more than 7.3m cases recorded, second only to the US. The country is looking at a 10 per cent economic contraction this year, according to the IMF, dealing a deep blow to the country's already weakened financial system.
This has unnerved investors who had bet on the future prospects of a fast-growing, urbanising emerging market giant. Metropolises like Mumbai or New Delhi has been overwhelmed by the virus, the urban middle-class gutted by job losses and millions of migrant workers have abandoned cities altogether.
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Source: technocodex.com
Japanese pension funds may hold key to Chinese JGB puzzle
October 19, 2020--China stormed back into Japanese government bonds over the summer with ¥2.2tn ($21bn) in purchases between June and August-the biggest three-month spree since Japan's Ministry of Finance began compiling data in 2005.
The country has made several similar incursions to the JGB market since 2016 — the previous record high for purchases — snapping up Japan’s notoriously low-yielding debt on a grand scale and causing head-scratching over what might have triggered the rush.
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Source: technocodex.com
China's economy plows on as world’s only major growth engine
October 19, 2020--China's recovery from the coronavirus pandemic continued in the third quarter and showed signs of broadening in September as consumer spending accelerated, keeping the economy on track to be the world's only major one to grow this year.
Gross domestic product expanded 4.9% in the third quarter from a year ago, missing economists' forecast for a 5.5% expansion. Both retail sales and industrial production gained momentum in September, reassuring markets that the recovery is on track.
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Source: news24.com
JPMorgan Asset Management plans ESG ETFs for Asian clients
October 15, 2020--JPMorgan Asset Management is looking to offer Asian institutional investors a range of environmental, social and governance exchange traded funds, as well as thematic and sector-based ETFs.
The US-headquartered fund manager has yet to list any pure ESG or thematic ETFs in any market.
But rising investor demand in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as an increasing number of fund launches across the industry in those investment areas, is driving development.view more
Source: FT.com
China's stock market value hits record high of more than $10tn
October 14, 2020--The total value of China's stock market has climbed to a record high of more than $10tn, as the country's accelerating economic recovery propelled it past the previous peak hit during an equities bubble five years ago.
The market capitalisation of all shares listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen hit $10.08tn according to Bloomberg data compiled on Wednesday based on the previous day's close. The benchmark CSI 300 slipped 0.6 per cent on Wednesday.
That is above the $10.05tn pinnacle hit in June 2015 immediately prior to a historic rout sparked by a crackdown on leveraged trading, which resulted in the Chinese market plunging by half.
The CSI 300 has rallied by about 17 per cent this year, compared to 9 per cent for Wall Street's S&P 500.
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Source: technocodex.com
India Needs to Sustain Reforms to Stem Economic Slowdown
October 8, 2020 – Faced with an unprecedented downturn, India needs to continue with critical reforms to reverse the sudden and steep impacts of COVID-19 on its economy, says the World Bank in its twice-a-year-regional update.
Released today, the latest South Asia Economic Focus forecasts a sharper than expected economic slump across the region, with regional growth expected to contract by 7.7 percent in 2020, after topping 6 percent annually in the past five years. India's economy, the region’s largest, is expected to contract by 9.6 percent in the fiscal year that started in March 2020. India’s growth is projected to rebound to 5.4 percent in FY22, mostly reflecting base effects, assuming COVID-related restrictions are completely lifted by 2022. Weak activity, domestically and abroad, is also likely to depress both Indian imports and exports.
view the World Bank South Asia Economic Focus
Source: World Bank
Vanguard faces roboadviser competition from Chinese partner
October 8, 2020--Chinese financial technology giant Ant Group plans to upgrade its fund portfolio services provision in a move that could bring it into direct competition with Bang Ni Tou, its roboadviser platform that it launched as joint venture with Vanguard.
Ant currently offers 13 fund portfolio services operated by 10 different Chinese fund houses, including six Sino-foreign joint ventures, that range from very conservative to riskier strategies, information from Alipay shows.
However, Huang Hao, president of digital finance business group at Ant, has said that China's largest online wealth platform aims to supply more asset managers with proprietary artificial intelligence to allow them to offer discretionary roboadvisory services.
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Source: technocodex.com