Category: News and opinion on finance

In Beirut’s Karantina, an area devastated by an explosion at the city’s port on August 4, volunteers have stepped in to help clean up its streets. They are helping the area’s vulnerable – and now homeless – residents where the state is not, braving fragile infrastructure caused by the blast, which killed at least 171 people …

Will the Beirut port explosion bring about true change in Lebanon?Read More

As businesses around the world emerge from lockdowns and hope to rebuild their revenues back towards normal, there’s a new alternative data source to track every step of the journey. Sidetrade, a provider of artificial intelligence-driven software for companies to accelerate their receivables, has a tracker for overdue payments from other businesses. It draws on …

SMEs must manage cash flow better to survive after the reopeningRead More

Europe’s neobanks are switching their attention to small business banking and expansion in the US, as they strive for global scale and profitability. Business banking will soon be a bigger revenue earner for UK neobank Revolut than retail clients, which already number about 10 million, according to its head of business Vaidas Adomauskas. Vaidas Adomauskas,Revolut …

Europe’s neobanks search for elusive profit in SMEs and the USRead More

Bó, RBS’s digital bank for retail customers, announced in early May it was to close after just six months in business, with only 11,000 customers. RBS’s digital bank for businesses, Mettle, will continue to operate. Digital solutions are thriving as more people are forced to work from home. In March, Skype saw a 220% increase …

RBS: Bó’s closure highlights traditional banks’ digital deficitRead More

Norwegian Air’s nail-biting $1 billion debt-for-equity swap with bondholders and lessors on May 4 has given the struggling airline vital breathing room, allowing it to access up to an equivalent of $290 million of state-guaranteed loans. But according to one prominent aviation banker, the deal will just delay the airline’s eventual demise, at best through …

Norwegian deal shows depth of turmoil in aviation financeRead More

China has opened the door wider to foreign funds keen to invest in its fast-growing market for distressed bank debt, allowing them to apply for licences for the first time to operate as provincial-level asset management companies (AMCs). The trigger was a decision to include the specialist financial service in Phase 1 of the US-China …

Foreign investors search for licences and profit as China NPLs riseRead More

Investors may already be eagerly hunting bargains amid the carnage in the coronavirus bear market One large and powerful group of investors, with plenty of money to put to work, should be quite relaxed at the precipitous falls stock markets have suffered due to the spread of coronavirus Covid-19 and may already be eagerly hunting …

Private equity can be the big winner in the Covid-19 bear marketRead More

When financial messaging provider Swift published its latest RMB Tracker in late January, almost no one noticed. For good reason. Anyone not focused on US politics or Australian fires was fretting about the growing threat of coronavirus. While too late to prevent the pathogen escaping into the wider world, China has pumped $22 billion into …

China’s RMB is less popular as it agesRead More

Emerging market (EM) manufacturers were facing difficulties even before the coronavirus pandemic decimated international demand for many of their products. The Asian Development Bank estimated that $1.5 trillion of requested trade finance was rejected last year – a figure that could rise to $2.5 trillion by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). In …

Non-bank trade finance providers look to boost market shareRead More

‘The broader question is whether the severity will ultimately lie closer to 2008 or the 1929 Great Depression’ The US risk score declined in Euromoney’s country risk survey in Q1 2020, although it has the potential to improve with the economic bounce – given that the hit from the global coronavirus pandemic has been the …

Longer-term rise in risk is the key problem for US investorsRead More