FRIDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2020 WORLD BUSINESS NEWSPAPER USA $2.50 Canada C$3.

00

Lacklustre gold Gillian Tett Keep your distance

Vaccine hopes take shine off yellow Why banks are rushing to link up with Will social changes we’ve adopted
metal — ANALYSIS, PAGE 10 Big Tech in the AI race — OPINION, PAGE 17 remain forever? — NOTEBOOK, PAGE 16

Americans told Tight-lipped Ex-Wirecard boss silent

during MPs’ grilling over €3bn scandal
Briefing
i Turkey raises rates in bid to boost lira

not to travel for Aurkey moved to tackle double-digit inflation and

boost the lira as it announced its biggest interest rate
rise in more than two years — a key shift of direction
after a shake-up in economic management. — PAGE 3

Thanksgiving i MPs back Warsaw’s EU budget block

Hours before an EU leaders’ video summit to discuss
the budget impasse, Polish MPs backed Warsaw’s
veto of the €1.8tn programme over rule of law

over virus fears

conditions that they said “targeted” Poland.— PAGE 2

i Amazon’s drone dreams struggle for lift

Amazon is laying off R&D and
manufacturing staff working on
its delivery-drone project, as
the retailer seeks outside help to
get its much delayed ambitions
3 CDC warns of superspreader potential off the ground.— PAGE 6

3 More than 1m cases recorded this week
Kiran Stacey and Kadhim Shubber
Washington
Peter Wells — New York
The top public health body in the US has
warned Americans not to travel for
Thanksgiving amid fears that the
upcoming public holiday is set to
become a superspreader event that will
fuel the rampant spread of coronavirus.
Officials at the US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention released new
guidance yesterday recommending
against all travel next week for Thanks-
giving, a holiday when millions of peo-
ple normally congregate with family
and friends. “We have been alarmed by
the exponential increases in cases, hos-
pitalisations and deaths,” Henry Walke,
the CDC’s Covid-19 incident manager,
said. The agency described the advice as
a “strong recommendation” that
stopped short of a requirement.
“We ask Americans to consider their
risk, to consider who is in their house-
hold, their own risk of acquiring infec-
tion and the . . . risk in the community
they are travelling to.” The CDC is advis-
ing those who travel for the holiday to
stay outdoors where they can, ventilate
houses, and wear masks even while
around members of their own family if
they have not been living together.
Dr Walke said the CDC, which has not
held a public briefing for several
months, had felt compelled to issue the
guidance after the US recorded more
than 1m new cases over the past week —
a tally that exceeds what most countries
have recorded during the entire pan-
demic. Some of the rise might be
explained by increased testing, but
other metrics indicate the epidemic is
spiralling out of control. Hospitalisa-
tions yesterday stood at a record 79,410,
according to the Covid Tracking Project.
The death rate of 1,162 a day over the
past week is at its highest since late May.
Nearly all states have rising cases,
hospitalisations and deaths, week on
week, prompting officials in a number
of cities and states to reintroduce curbs
on businesses and shut schools.
Bill de Blasio, New York City mayor,
yesterday said indoor dining at restau-
rants and bars would be halted within a
“week or two” after ordering the closure
of the city’s schools this week.
The travel advice from the CDC comes
at a time of turmoil in the US, which has
been thrown into political chaos after
Donald Trump refused to accept the
result of the presidential election.
The president has made just one pub-
lic appearance since the election was
called for his Democratic rival Joe
Biden, and has not met his own corona-
virus task force in weeks.
Barry Bloom, professor of public
health at Harvard University, said:
“Given the chaos of the US’s Covid-19
response, no one agency has the author-
ity to change people’s behaviour — the
message has to be consistent from mul-
tiple credible sources.”
He added: “Are people going to travel
over Thanksgiving? The answer is ‘yes’.
We’re a week beforehand and plans
have already been made.”
Reports and Global Insight page 4
Paul Hudson page 17
Markus Braun, former chief
executive of disgraced German
company Wirecard, testifies at
a parliamentary committee in
Berlin yesterday.
Suspected of leading a criminal
racket that defrauded creditors
of €3.2bn at the collapsed pay-
ments group, it was his first
i Muddy Waters attack hits Joyy’s shares
Shares in Chinese technology group Joyy fell as
much as 26 per cent after short seller Muddy
Waters, founded by Carson Block, called its
livestreaming site a fraud.— PAGE 8; LEX, PAGE 18
i Australian troops face murder inquiry
Australian special forces were allegedly involved in
the murder of 39 civilians in Afghanistan and took
part in “blooding”, where junior soldiers were made
to execute prisoners to achieve a first kill.— PAGE 3
i China debt issue draws bumper demand
China has sold its first negative-yielding sovereign
bond, a euro-denominated deal that drew bumper
European demand — €18bn for €4bn of bonds —
from investors facing record low returns.— PAGE 10
i UK takes reins in telecoms oversight
Britain’s antitrust body has taken full control over
the review of a £31bn Virgin Media-O2 merger and is
to fast-track its probe after the groups sought to
speed the review when it moved to London.— PAGE 6
Datawatch
Confidence gap
Europeans' faith in Boris Johnson's Confidence that
foreign policy (%) UK prime minister
Filip Singer/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
No confidence Confidence Boris Johnson will
public appearance since his running an elaborate fraud 60 40 20 0 20 40 60 do the right thing
arrest in June. scheme that embezzled billions Sweden in terms of world
Netherlands affairs is severely
After delivering a statement, of euros from investors. He has Denmark lacking in some
Mr Braun infuriated MPs by denied all allegations. UK big European
refusing to answer any ques- In his statement he said that Belgium countries. In Italy
tions — even basic inquiries German regulators were not to France
Germany and Spain just
such as what his PhD thesis was blame for the company’s fall, Spain one in five people
or if he had a daughter. adding he hoped prosecutors Italy believes he will
Mr Braun faces up to 15 years would trace the missing money. Source: Pew Research act appropriately.
in jail if he is found guilty of Report page 2

Brexit timetable under fresh pressure

Zambia’s high-octane
borrowing ends in tears
Five years after Zambia sold the last of
its US dollar bonds in 2015, sales that
capped the copper-rich nation’s drive
for market credibility, the bond is in
default, along with the rest of Zambia’s
$3bn international borrowings. The
government has blamed Covid-19 for
problems in managing its $12bn of
debt, but analysts contend that the
default shows how misrule and high-
octane borrowing have eroded one of
Africa’s fastest-growing economies.
Analysis i PAGE 3
as EU delegate’s Covid case halts talks
Jim Brunsden — Brussels
Philip Stafford — London
Britain and Brussels have suspended
Brexit talks after an EU negotiator
caught Covid-19, heaping pressure on a
tight timetable as financial services
groups warned of potential disruption
after January 1.
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotia-
tor, said yesterday that he and his UK
counterpart, David Frost, had decided
to freeze talks “for a short period”.
Lord Frost said that the two sides were
in close contact and that “the health of
our teams comes first”.
Both sides are aware that time is run-
ning out to ratify a deal before the end of
Britain’s Brexit transition period. Brus-
sels officials have warned that it will be
difficult to check, translate and ratify a
deal through the European Parliament
if no agreement is found by the end of
next week.
The financial sector is calling for clar-
ity from the EU and UK over trading
conditions after the transition.
The future-relationship on financial
services will depend on which access
rights each side is prepared to grant the
other — an assessment that is going on in
parallel to the talks.
Traders are warning that some deriv-
atives trading might need to shift to the
US unless the two parties recognise
financial regulations on each side of the
Channel as equally robust — a process
known as “granting equivalence”.
An EU decision on equivalence was
due at the end of June but the bloc has
held back until the UK provides clarity
on how far it intends to diverge from EU
rules. Britain has been more forthcom-
ing, granting the EU equivalence in a
number of activities this month, though
some others are still on hold.
“There are still some glaring gaps that
haven’t been addressed by either the UK
or EU, including equivalence for trading
venues,” said Scott O’Malia, chief execu-
tive of Isda, an industry association for
the derivatives market.
Without equivalence, British and EU
companies might have to buy and sell
derivatives in the US, he added. “This
will lead to fragmentation and a lack of
efficiency for no apparent benefit . . .
We need certainty as soon as possible.”
EU officials have indicated that Brus-
sels is reluctant to take such decisions
while trade talks are going on.
The future-relationship negotiations,
involving 100-strong teams on each
side, remain bogged down over access to
British fishing waters and “level playing
field” guarantees for companies.

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2 ★
Spending programme
Polish parliament backs PM on EU budget
Politicians rail against
move by bloc to link funds
to rule-of-law mechanism
James Shotter — Warsaw
Sam Fleming — Brussels
Poland’s parliament issued a resolution
backing Warsaw’s stance in negotiations
over the EU’s €1.8tn budget and recov-
ery package, hours before a summit in
which the bloc’s leaders were due to dis-
cuss ways out of the impasse.
Two weeks ago European officials
struck a deal to link access to funds to
the respect for EU principles, including
the independence of the judiciary, in a
Europe chill
Climate goals
under threat
The EU is in danger of missing a
deadline to finalise its 2030 climate
goals, with fears that negotiations
will be derailed by Poland and
Hungary’s veto of the bloc’s next
budget.
The move to set a target to cut
emissions by 55 per cent by 2030
risks being snarled up in the spat.
That could mean billions of euros of
green transition aid no longer being
available for those economies reliant
on fossil fuels — chief among them
Poland, which was earmarked as the
biggest beneficiary from the €17.5bn
Just Transition Fund. Mehreen Khan
and Sam Fleming, Brussels
Finland premier fears populist gain from Covid
Call for common EU approach
amid fear governments will be
blamed for economic impact
Richard Milne
Nordic and Baltic Correspondent
Populist parties will gain in popularity
and economies will remain closed
unless Europe manages to get Covid-19
infections under control, according to
the prime minister of the country with
the lowest number of cases in the EU.
Sanna Marin, Finland’s prime minis-
ter, told the Financial Times that the
public across Europe could blame gov-
ernments for closing economies and
hurting their wages and employment.
“This will cause protests more and
more, and it’s a breeding ground for
populist movements across Europe.
When you’re closing an economy and
people’s workplaces, it will cause politi-
cal instability. Populists come with easy
answers to difficult problems, but their
solutions are rarely the right ones,” she
added.
Ms Marin called for Europe to agree a
common strategy, a significant move as
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FRIDAY 31 MARCH 2017
Trump vs the Valley
Tech titans need to minimise
political risk — GILLIAN TETT, PAGE 13
HMRC warns
customs risks
being swamped
by Brexit surge
3 Confidence in IT plans ‘has collapsed’
3 Fivefold rise in declarations expected
JAMES BLITZ — WHITEHALL EDITOR
A computer system acquired to collect
duties and clear imports into the UK
may not be able to handle the huge
surge in workload expected once Britain
leaves the EU, customs authorities have
admitted to MPs.
HM Revenue & Customs told a parlia-
mentary inquiry that the new system
needed urgent action to be ready by
March 2019, when Brexit is due to be
completed, and the chair of the probe
said confidence it would be operational
in time “has collapsed”.
Setting up a digital customs system
has been at the heart of Whitehall’s
Brexit planning because of the fivefold
increase in declarations expected at
British ports when the UK leaves the EU.
FINANCIAL TIMES
About 53 per cent of British imports
come from the EU, and do not require
checks because they arrive through the
single market and customs union. But
Theresa May announced in January that
Brexit would include departure from
both trading blocs. HMRC handles 60m
declarations a year but, once outside the
customs union, the number is expected
to hit 300m.
The revelations about the system,
called Customs Declaration Service, are
330 Hudson Street,
likely to throw a sharper spotlight on
whether Whitehall can implement a
host of regulatory regimes — in areas
ranging from customs and immigration
to agriculture and fisheries — by the
time Britain leaves the EU.
Problems with CDS and other projects
New York, NY 10013 essential to Brexit could force London to
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Congressional Republicans seeking to
avert a US government shutdown after
April 28 have resisted Donald Trump’s
attempt to tack funds to pay for a wall
on the US-Mexico border on to
stopgap spending plans. They fear
that his planned $33bn increase in
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defence and border spending could
force a federal shutdown for the first
time since 2013, as Democrats refuse
to accept the proposals.
US budget Q&A and
Trump attack over health bill i PAGE 8
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A Five Star plan?
Italy’s populists are trying to woo
the poor — BIG READ, PAGE 11
adjust its negotiation position with the
EU, a Whitehall official said. “If running
our own customs system is proving
much harder than we anticipated, that
ought to have an impact on how we
press for certain options in Brussels.”
In a letter to Andrew Tyrie, chairman
of the Commons treasury select com-
mittee, HMRC said the timetable for
delivering CDS was “challenging but
achievable”. But, it added, CDS was “a
complex programme” that needed to be
linked to dozens of other computer sys-
tems to work properly. In November,
HMRC assigned a “green traffic light” to
CDS, indicating it would be delivered on
time. But last month, it wrote to the
committee saying the programme had
been relegated to “amber/red,” which
means there are “major risks or issues
apparent in a number ofkey areas”.
HMRC said last night: “[CDS] is on
track to be delivered by January 2019,
and it will be able to support frictionless
international trade once the UK leaves
the EU . . . Internal ratings are designed
to make sure that each project gets the
focus and resource it requires for suc-
cessful delivery.”
HMRC’s letters to the select commit-
tee, which will be published today, pro-
vide no explanation for the rating
change, but some MPs believe it was
caused by Mrs May’s unexpected deci-
sion to leave the EU customs union.
Timetable & Great Repeal Bill page 2
Scheme to import EU laws page 3
Editorial Comment & Notebook page 12
Philip Stephens & Chris Giles page 13
JPMorgan eye options page 18
City watchdog sends a clear message as
banker loses job over WhatsApp boast
LAURA NOONAN — DUBLIN
JENNIFER THOMPSON — LONDON
A boastful WhatsApp message has cost
a London investment banker his job
and a £37,000 fine in the first case of
regulators cracking down on commu-
nications over Facebook’s popular
chat app.
The fine by the Financial Conduct
Authority highlights the increasing
problem new media pose for companies
that need to monitor and archive their
staff’s communication.
Several large investment banks have
banned employees from sending client
information over messaging services
including WhatsApp, which uses an
encryption system that cannot be
accessed without permission from the
user. Deutsche Bank last year banned
WhatsApp from work-issued Black-
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WORLD BUSINESS NEWSPAPER
Lloyd’s of Brussels Insurance market
to tap new talent pool with EU base
Lloyd’s of London chose Brus-
sels over “five or six” other
cities in its decision to set up an
EU base to help deal with the
expected loss of passporting
rights after Brexit.
John Nelson, chairman of the
centuries-old insurance mar-
ket, said he expected other
Berrys after discussions with regulators.
Christopher Niehaus, a former Jeffer-
ies banker, passed confidential client
information to a “personal acquaint-
ance and a friend” using WhatsApp,
according to the FCA. The regulator said
Mr Niehaus had turned over his device
to his employer voluntarily.
The FCA said Mr Niehaus had shared
confidential information on the messag-
ing system “on a number of occasions”
last year to “impress” people.
Several banks have banned the use of
new media from work-issued devices,
but the situation has become trickier as
banks move towards a “bring your own
device” policy. Goldman Sachs has
clamped down on its staff’s phone bills
as iPhone-loving staff spurn their work-
issued BlackBerrys.
Bankers at two institutions said staff
are typically trained in how to use new
World Markets
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52.98
1248.80
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49.51
52.54
1251.10
insurers to follow. Most of the
business written in Brussels
will be reinsured back to the
syndicates at its City of London
headquarters, pictured above.
The Belgian capital had not
been seen as the first choice for
London’s specialist insurance
groups after the UK leaves the
media at work, but banks are unable to
ban people from installing apps on their
private phones.
Andrew Bodnar, a barrister at Matrix
Chambers, said the case set “a precedent
in that it shows the FCA sees these mes-
saging apps as the same as everything
else”.
Information shared by Mr Niehaus
included the identity and details of a
client and information about a rival of
Jefferies. In one instance the banker
boasted how he might be able to pay off
his mortgage if a deal was successful.
Mr Niehaus was suspended from Jef-
feries and resigned before the comple-
tion of a disciplinary process.
Jefferies declined to comment while
Facebook did not respond to a request
for comment.
Additional reporting by Chloe Cornish
Lombard page 20
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FINANCIAL TIMES Friday 20 November 2020
INTERNATIONAL
German scandal
Wirecard’s
former chief
move proponents said would provide a
powerful tool to push back against the
respect for their rights which are
enshrined in the [EU’s] treaties”.
Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s prime
minister, accused the EU on Wednesday
Failure to find agreement and enact
the seven-year budget would have dam-
refuses to pin
authoritarian drift in some states.
However, Poland and Hungary, which
The resolution reiterated Warsaw’s
criticism that the rule-of-law mecha-
of using the rule of law as a “propaganda
stick” against his country, comparing its
aging consequences for EU states,
including Poland and Hungary.
collapse on
are both subject to disciplinary proce-
dures over the rule of law, indicated on
Monday they would veto the bloc’s
nism would pave the way for politically
motivated attacks on Warsaw.
“All propositions containing provi-
actions to Poland’s former communist
dictatorship. He warned that any politi-
cally motivated use of the proposed
Without an agreement by early
December, the bloc would have to fall
back on an emergency spending pro-
regulators
budget over the mechanism, leaving sions that are vague, imprecise and rule-of-law mechanism against Poland gramme for 2021 which would extend
officials scrambling to find ways to prone to biased interpretation must be would lead to the collapse of the bloc. the bloc’s 2020 spending ceilings but Guy Chazan and Olaf Storbeck
Berlin
revive the package. It is designed to help decisively rejected — otherwise there is “We demand that the EU is not a allow money to flow only to some
the bloc’s battered economies weather a threat that payments from the EU union of double standards but a union of ringfenced areas. Cohesion payments Markus Braun, the former chief execu-
the impact of the pandemic. budget could be completely blocked by equals, and not a union of more and less would continue for existing projects but tive of scandal-hit payments company
EU leaders were set to discuss ways an arbitrary decision of the European equal,” he said, listing a number of new ones would not be started, hitting Wirecard, told MPs that German regu-
forward during a virtual summit yester- Commission,” the resolution said. grievances with the bloc, ranging from poorer EU member states in particular. lators and politicians were not to blame
day evening. But shortly before the “From numerous statements from the treatment of Polish “posted work- The squeeze would be exacerbated by for its collapse, and that he hoped pros-
meeting, Poland’s parliament resolved politicians from many European coun- ers” to the fact that many young Poles — delays to the EU’s €750bn recovery ecutors would succeed in tracing its
not to accept “any solution which does tries, there is no doubt that Poland is the “flower of the nation” — had gone fund, which includes Poland and Hun- missing billions.
not guarantee EU member states meant to be the target of such actions.” abroad for work. gary among its key beneficiaries.
Mr Braun is one of at least seven former
senior managers of Wirecard suspected
of running a criminal racket that
defrauded creditors of €3.2bn. His
appearance yesterday before a Bun-
destag inquiry was his first in public
since his arrest last summer, shortly
after the company he led collapsed in
one of the biggest accounting scandals
in postwar Germany.
In a statement to the inquiry,
Mr Braun said he had “at no point” con-
cluded that “authorities, supervisory
bodies or politicians had behaved
improperly, dishonestly or in breach of
their duties” in the run-up to Wirecard’s
collapse. “I can’t understand why exter-
nal regulators should be held responsi-
ble for failures here,” he said, adding
that EY, Wirecard’s longtime auditor,
was “apparently comprehensively
deceived” during the annual audits, as it
did not spot irregularities “despite
extensive checks”.
Having delivered his statement,
Mr Braun refused to answer questions
from MPs, citing his right under German
Icebergs off Greenland, law to remain silent to the extent that he
which has experienced declined to answer even basic inquiries,
significant melting in the such as what the subject of his PhD the-
past decade — Felipe Dana/AP sis was or if he had a daughter.
Mr Braun emphasised he had sig-
nalled his willingness to co-operate with
prosecutors, adding that he had “full
confidence in the independence and
objectivity of the investigative authori-
Scandinavia. Pandemic ties” and their ability to trace “the
whereabouts of the embezzled money”.
But Hans Michelbach, an MP for
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU-CSU
bloc, said Munich prosecutors later
informed the parliamentary commis-
sion they were unaware of Mr Braun’s
Finland is the only EU country not to be “I think that the situation might get The centre-left party is again the larg- occurred in those already in quarantine. willingness to co-operate. Munich pros-
hit by a strong second wave of Covid-19 even worse and people might get even est in opinion polls but is only slightly Finland’s economy has been one of ecutors and Mr Braun’s lawyer could not
this autumn. It has an average of about more tired. The situation has got worse ahead of the populist, anti-immigration the least affected by Covid-19 this year, be reached for comment.
40 daily cases per million people, a level in the autumn. People often want to find Finns party. Ms Marin said the situation and Ms Marin said she saw no distinc- MPs were infuriated by Mr Braun’s
that has remained stable for the past someone to blame and often the easiest could deteriorate in Finland, where she tion between protecting health and pro- refusal to answer questions. Cansel Kiz-
month. Austria has 20 times the ones to blame are the governments and praised citizens for acting responsibly. tecting the economy. “We need to get iltepe, a lawmaker for the Social Demo-
number of daily cases, the Czech Repub- politicians,” she added. “It could get worse very fast if we aren’t the virus under control. This is the main crats, suggested he had “destroyed peo-
lic 15 times, and Sweden 10 times. Ms Marin became the world’s young- aware of the seriousness of the situation thing we need to decide: to stop the virus ple’s faith” in German institutions. “Are
Ms Marin said Finland’s success was est serving prime minister last Decem- and we don’t constantly take care of our spreading. It’s the only way to open our you aware that your silence is dragging
down to a robust test-and-trace regime, ber when she took charge of Finland at actions.” economies . . . health and economy are people into the abyss?” she said.
half the population using its Covid-19 the age of 34. Her time in office has been Finland benefited from a strong focus very heavily linked.” Mr Michelbach suggested Mr Braun
tracking app, and targeted restrictions, dominated by coronavirus and her clear on preparedness, including having laws She argued that EU countries should should be fined for refusing to engage.
which include quarantine for almost all communication style has won plaudits, already in place for dealing with pan- make a joint “conscious decision that we Munich prosecutors accuse Mr Braun
travellers from Europe. as well as increasing the polling num- demics and emergency stockpiles of want to get the virus under control. I of being the leader of a “gang” of white-
But she said Finland would suffer if bers for her Social Democratic party. protective equipment. It is also helped haven’t seen the decision made together collar criminals who for years ran an
other European countries did not get by Finns’ tendency to keep a distance that we want to suppress the virus as elaborate fraud, hoodwinked banks and
the pandemic under control, and urged from each other, as the prime minister much as possible.” investors and embezzled billions of
them to back a common strategy includ- acknowledged, as well as low population Finland has some of the strictest crite- euros, crimes that are punishable by up
ing more testing, contact tracing, and density and strong trust in authorities. ria in Europe for when travellers must to 15 years in jail. Mr Braun has dis-
joint rules to allow travel to restart. But Pekka Nuorti, professor of epide- go into quarantine, although the isola- missed all the allegations against him.
“This is not a competition. We all need miology at Tampere University, said its tion itself is mostly self-policed. Ms MPs set up their inquiry last summer
to be successful to be safe . . . In Fin- success had more to do with its basic Marin said the EU needed to develop a as the Wirecard affair escalated from a
land, the situation is more stable, but epidemiological principles of test, iso- “secure system for travel” so that people corporate affair into a political scandal.
still we are also more at risk if the virus late, trace and quarantine. could be tested both on departure and They want to know why the authori-
spreads in other countries,” she added. ‘It could get worse very “In contrast to some other countries, arrival, as well as common certificates ties were so slow to recognise the gravity
Many populist parties across Europe our contact tracing has been very effec- for vaccinations and tests to ease cross- of the situation at Wirecard, and why
have lost support during the pandemic fast if we aren’t aware tive throughout the summer and fall,” border journeys in the future. BaFin, Germany’s financial regulator,
as voters have flocked to parties in of the seriousness of he said, adding that authorities had “Testing is key. We need to test people seemed more eager to pursue journal-
power. But Ms Marin said she was wor- been able to identify the source of infec- more. This is the key to maintaining the ists and short-sellers who had exposed
ried, as the general public were already the situation’ tion in 80 per cent of cases in many situation under control,” she added. irregularities at the group than to go
tired of the situation. regions, while many “secondary cases” See Opinion after the company itself.
Competition concerns
Brussels lacks firepower to rein in Big Tech, says auditor
UK £2.70 Channel Islands £3.00; Republic of Ireland €3.00
Javier Espinoza — Brussels They added that the EU usually ill equipped to deal with a sector where ops its Digital Services Act, a draft of
Dear Don...
looked at competition issues through companies grew so quickly and that Big which is expected before the end of the
May’s first stab at the break-up
letter — ROBERT SHRIMSLEY, PAGE 12
Brussels has failed to tame Big Tech
the lens of market share, prices of goods Tech competed “for a market instead of year. The new regulation is the first
because it has moved too slowly and
UK £3.80; Channel Islands £3.80; Republic of Ireland €3.80 SATURDAY 1 APRIL / SUNDAY 2 APRIL 2017
Briefing
THE END
i US bargain-hunters fuel Europe M&A
Europe has become the big target for cross-border
or services and profit margins. in a market, leading to ‘winner-takes- overhaul of the EU’s approach to inter-
dealmaking, as US companies ride a Trump-fuelled
equity market rally to hunt for bargains across the
HOW DRIVERLESS
OF THE TECHNOLOGY IS
Atlantic.— PAGE 15; CHINA CURBS HIT DEALS, PAGE 17
lacks the legal muscle to restrain the
i Report outlines longer NHS waiting times
A report on how the health service can survive CHANGING AN
ROAD
more austerity has said patients will wait longer for
non-urgent operations and for A&E treatment while AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE Censors and sensitivity
some surgical procedures will be scrapped.— PAGE 4
But these criteria were not “sufficient all’ outcomes”. net companies for two decades and is
i Emerging nations in record debt sales Warning: this article may be
FT WEEKEND MAGAZINE
FEBRUARY 4 2017
Developing countries have sold record levels of
government debt in the first quarter of this year,
upsetting — LIFE & ARTS
likes of Google and Facebook from
taking advantage of a surge in optimism toward
emerging markets as trade booms.— PAGE 15
Credit Suisse Art of persuasion Mystery deepens
i London tower plans break records
How To Spend It
to define market power and evaluate Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s compe- likely to label Big Tech companies as
A survey has revealed that a
record 455 tall buildings are
planned or under construction
in London. Work began on
over disputed painting of Jane Austen
engulfed in
almost one tower a week
crushing their rivals, according to a
during 2016.— PAGE 4
i Tillerson fails to ease Turkey tensions
The US secretary of state has failed to reconcile
fresh tax probe
competition” when it came to scrutinis- tition commissioner, has acknowledged gatekeepers who will be subject to more
tensions after talks in Ankara with President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan on issues including Syria and the
extradition of cleric Fethullah Gulen.— PAGE 9
Chic new lodgings
i Toshiba investors doubt revival plan
in Scotland
report from the EU’s external auditor.
In a stormy three-hour meeting, investors accused MAGAZINE
managers ofhaving an entrenched secrecy culture
3 UK, France and Netherlands swoop
and cast doubt on a revival plan after Westinghouse
filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.— PAGE 16
3 Blow for bid to clean up Swiss image
ing the likes of Google and Facebook. In that the commission needs to find better onerous rules.
i HSBC woos transgender customers
The bank has unveiled a range of gender-neutral
RALPH ATKINS — ZURICH it followed “a strategy offull client tax
DUNCAN
titles such asROBINSON — BRUSSELS
“Mx”, in addition to Mr, Mrs, Misscompliance”
or but was still trying to
Ms, in a move to embrace diversity and cater togather the information about the probes.
Credit
needs Suisse hascustomers.
of transgender been targeted by
— PAGE 20 HM Revenue & Customs said it had
sweeping tax investigations in the UK, launched a criminal investigation into
France and the Netherlands, setting suspected tax evasion and money laun-
back Switzerland’s attempts to clean up dering by “a global financial institution
Datawatch
Antitrust probes are often too long and digital markets, companies such as remedies to ensure a level playing field. As part of the proposals, Big Tech
its image as a tax haven. and certain ofits employees”. The UK
AFP
Terror attacks inwith
co-operating
were contacted
Highlighted
western
attack byOthers
Europe after
authorities
offices in London, Paris and Amsterdam
Recent
Good Friday, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, the
The Swiss bank said yesterday it was tax authority added: “The international
reach
itsattacks
notably the message
2011
— of this investigation sends a clear
that there is no hiding place for
massacre bythose seeking to evade tax.”
local officials
“concerning client tax matters”. Anders BreivikDutch
Norway, the
in prosecutors, who initiated the
Dutch authorities said their counter- action, said they seized jewellery, paint-
The lure of the exotic
Robin Lane Fox on the flair
of foreign flora — HOUSE & HOME
EU, with Dublin and Luxem- parts in Germany wereBrussels attacks in Paris
also involved, ings and gold ingots as part of their
day after Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and the day
while Australia’s revenue department and Nice, and the while French officials said their
probe;
bourg thought to be more likely Norway Brussels suicide
said it was investigating a Swiss
Nice bank. investigation had revealed “several
enforcement only occurs after Big Tech Amazon are both the marketplace and Last week, she announced new charges might be forced to share data with
homes for the industry. But Paris bombings — have
Mr Nelson said the city won on The inquiries threaten to undermine thousand” bank accounts opened in
bucked the trend
its transport links, talent pool efforts by the country’s banking sector Switzerland and not declared to French
of generally low
and “extremely good regula- to overhaul business models and ensure tax authorities.
fatalities from
tory reputation”. customers meet international tax The Swiss attorney-general’s office
Sources: Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre terror incidents in
requirements following a US-led clamp- western Europesaid it was “astonished at the way this
Lex page 14
Insurers set to follow page 18
billions of dollars in fines.
after Christmas Day.
down on evaders, which resulted in operation has been organised with the
deliberate exclusion of Switzerland”. It
The probes risk sparking an interna- demanded a written explanation from
tional dispute after the Swiss attorney- Dutch authorities.
companies have wiped out the competi- the seller of services, and large online against Amazon but added that she was smaller rivals and be banned from
general’s office expressed “astonish- In 2014, Credit Suisse pleaded guilty
ment” that it had been left out of the in the US to an “extensive and wide-
actions co-ordinated by Eurojust, the ranging conspiracy” to help clients THE RISE
Escape OF
the taper ECO-GLAM
trap
EU’s judicial liaison body. evade tax. It agreed to fines of $2.6bn.
Credit Suisse, whose shares fell 1.2 per Additional reporting by Laura Noonan in
cent yesterday, identified itself as the Dublin, Caroline Binham and Vanessa
subject ofinvestigations in the Nether- Houlder in London, and Michael Stothard
How high earners can evade
a pension headache — FT MONEY
lands, France and the UK. The bank said in Paris Austen’s descendants insist the Rice portrait depicts her as a girl — see magazine Bridgeman Art Library
tion, the European Court of Auditors platforms might use their huge number willing to work with the company to find unfairly promoting their own services
US subscription rates, 1 year $406. Periodicals
Brussels takes tough stance on Brexit
with Spain handed veto over Gibraltar
390_Cover_PRESS.indd 1 19/01/2017 13:57
postage paid at New York, NY and at additional
said in a report on a decade of the EU’s of users to set unfair conditions, the a solution. on their platforms, according to people
ALEX BARKER — BRUSSELS ambitious trade and airline access deals. mise. If Britain wants to prolong its
GEORGE PARKER — LONDON Gibraltar yesterday hit back at the status within the single market after
STEFAN WAGSTYL — BERLIN clause, saying the territory had “shame- Brexit, the guidelines state it would
The EU yesterday took a tough opening fully been singled out for unfavourable require “existing regulatory, budgetary,
stance in Brexit negotiations, rejecting treatment by the council at the behest of supervisory and enforcement instru-
Living wage rise to pile
pressure on care services
mailing offices; Post-Master. Send address changes
Britain’s plea for early trade talks and
explicitly giving Spain a veto over any
arrangements that apply to Gibraltar.
Spain”. Madrid defended the draft
clause, pointing out that it only reflected
“the traditional Spanish position”.
ments and structures to apply”.
Mr Tusk wants talks on future trade
to begin only once “sufficient progress”
attempts to rein in US tech groups. report added. Tensions between the EU and Big directly involved in the discussions.
Senior EU diplomats noted that has been made on Britain’s exit bill and
About 2.3m people will benefit from European Council president Donald Mr Tusk’s text left room for negotiators citizen rights, which Whitehall officials
today’s increase in the national living Tusk’s first draft of the guidelines, to work with in coming months. Prime believe means simultaneous talks are
wage to £7.50 per hour. But the rise which are an important milestone on minister Theresa May’s allies insisted possible if certain conditions are met.
will pile pressure on English councils,
which will have to pay care workers a
lot more. Some 43 per cent of care
staff — amounting to 341,000 people
aged 25 and over — earn less than the
to F.T. Publications Inc., PO Box 469, Newburgh, NY
the road to Brexit, sought to damp Brit-
ain’s expectations by setting out a
“phased approach” to the divorce proc-
ess that prioritises progress on with-
drawal terms.
that the EU negotiating stance was
largely “constructive”, with one saying it
was “within the parameters of what we
were expecting, perhaps more on the
upside”.
Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary,
reassured European colleagues at a
Nato summit in Brussels that Mrs May
had not intended to “threaten” the EU
when she linked security co-operation
This year marked a decade since The analysis warned that the EU was Tech have been rising as the bloc devel- Last month, an internal Google docu-
new living wage and the increase is The decision to add the clause giving British officials admitted that the EU’s after Brexit with a trade deal.
expected to cost councils’ care services Spain the right to veto any EU-UK trade insistence on a continuing role for the Reports & analysis page 3
price yield chg
12551; USPS number, 190640; ISSN# 09159460.
£360m in the coming financial year. deals covering Gibraltar could make the European Court of Justice in any transi- Jonathan Powell, Tim Harford &
98.87 2.38 0.00
Analysis i PAGE 4 300-year territorial dispute between tion deal could be problematic. Man in the News: David Davis page 11
100.46 1.21 -0.03
Madrid and London an obstacle to Brussels sees little room for compro- Henry Mance page 12
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Friday 20 November 2020 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 3

INTERNATIONAL

Zambia’s drive for market

Monetary policy

Turkey performs about-turn

on interest rates with big rise
credibility ends in default Laura Pitel — Ankara

Turkey has announced its biggest

Fast-growing economy undone by high-octane borrowing and misrule, say analysts
Joseph Cotterill — Johannesburg
When Zambia sold the last of its three
US dollar bonds in 2015, it capped a dec-
ade in which the copper-endowed coun-
try went from needing debt relief
reserved for the poorest to tapping the
global capital markets with ease.
Five years later the bond is in default,
with the rest of Zambia’s $3bn interna-
tional borrowings, after President Edgar
Lungu’s government skipped a $42.5m
interest payment due last week during
debt restructuring negotiations.
Africa’s first bond default during the
pandemic, and its first on multiple US
dollar bonds at the same time, “risked
setting a more adversarial backdrop”
for those talks, bondholders said this
week. With an IMF visit due next month
over a potential bailout, talks with
bondholders are yet to be scheduled.
Mr Lungu’s government, which is
campaigning for re-election next year,
has blamed coronavirus for problems
managing its $12bn of debt. The
kwacha, Zambia’s currency, has fallen
about a third against the US dollar this
year as the virus dented demand for
copper. The IMF forecasts the economy
could shrink nearly 5 per cent this year.
The G20 group of large economies has
sought to help poorer countries with
debt problems during the pandemic,
but analysts say the default also illus-
trates how high-octane borrowing and
misrule combined to undermine one of
Africa’s fastest-growing economies.
Successive governments “went
through a lot of blood, sweat and tears”
to establish Africa’s second-biggest cop-
per producer as a credible borrower,
said Bradford Machila, an opposition
politician. For this to end in default in
just a few years was a “massive embar-
rassment and a huge source of anger”.
Gregory Smith, a strategist at M&G
Investments and a former World Bank
economist in Zambia, said the “market
access came at a time when Zambia had
very low debt” — under a third of gross
domestic product — and a “wonderful
growth spurt”.
The economy doubled in size in the
decade to 2015, powered by mine priva-
tisations and Chinese demand for cop-
per. The take-off and the need to tackle
high rates of rural poverty led to de­-
mand for infrastructure projects that
traditional concessional loans for poor
countries from lenders such as the
World Bank could not meet. Zambia
turned to China and other lenders. Mr
Lungu, who took power in 2015, prom-
ised to transform rural voters’ lives.
“Where it goes wrong is they didn’t
have the right system for selecting
projects,” Mr Smith said. Some were val-
uable for development, such as a hydro-
power dam project. Others were more
dubious priorities, including a second
international airport for the Copperbelt
mining region and poorly planned high-
ways. “You could argue that Zambia had
an investment problem, not a debt
problem, in those years,” Mr Smith said.
Now its complicated debt stock has
set creditors against each other.
Hours before the default, bond inves-
tors rejected a request for a standstill
over concerns the government was not
coming clean on Chinese debts of $3bn.
The government said bondholders were
getting the same treatment as Chinese
and other creditors that it had already
defaulted on.
Lusaka, capital more,” said Bwalya Ng’andu, finance
of Zambia. The minister, days after the default. “If I
IMF is due to don’t pay the bondholders, my legs will
visit next month remain intact.”
over a potential Zambia had reached payment defer-
bailout — Alamy rals with China ExIm Bank and China
Development Bank but needed dialogue
with all creditors for a full debt workout
and resumption of market access, Mr
Smith pointed out.
Mr Lungu is betting that voters will be
more accepting than bondholders that
the airports and roads built using the
debts have been worthwhile. “Zambians
will bring me back in 2021 because I
have done a lot of works for the coun-
try,” he said last month.
Civil society activists and opposition
parties say Mr Lungu is trying for an
Zambia’s currency collapses
Kwacha per $
12
14
16
18
20
‘The unconstitutional third term, and chal-
lenges in court may be mounted. He
moment became president during the first term
I pay, the of his predecessor, who died in office. Mr
Lungu then won a poll in 2016. He
other insists he has served only one term.
creditors More recently, a set of constitutional
changes that would have increased his
are going powers, known as Bill 10, failed to win
to put support from lawmakers.
Default “doesn’t really affect him
dynamite politically”, said Trevor Simumba, a
under my Zambian analyst of the country’s debts.
If anything, Bill 10’s failure meant that
legs and Mr Lungu “must spend more on patron-
blow off my age projects” for the polls, including a
recent fourfold rise in fertiliser subsi-
legs. I’m dies in the national budget, he said.
gone’ Analysts say the president could press
the central bank to buy domestic state
Bwalya bonds to fund spending.
Ng’andu, That will complicate Zambia’s quest
finance minister for a bailout from the IMF that Mr
Lungu once scorned. Analysts doubt
that the fund will be able to secure a
commitment to fiscal belt-tightening
before the polls.
Mr Lungu “just wants to buy time”
rather than rethink how Zambia uses
debt for development, Mr Simumba
said. “The focus of everything, even the
request for relief, has been aligned to the
interest rate rise in more than two
years as it signalled a change of direc-
tion after a shake-up in the country’s
economic management.
In the first rate-setting meeting chaired
by Naci Agbal, the new central bank
governor, the bank moved to tame
double-digit inflation and bolster the
Turkish lira by lifting its benchmark
one-week repo rate 4.75 percentage
points to 15 per cent.
The lira jumped almost 3 per cent
against the dollar immediately after the
decision, before trimming its gains to
1.9 per cent, or TL7.56. Turkey’s cur-
rency is still down 22 per cent since the
end of last year.
The lira languished at record lows for
months before the resignation of Berat
Albayrak, President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan’s son-in-law, as finance minis-
ter 10 days ago. Investors had grown
alarmed by Mr Albayrak’s management
of the economy, especially his apparent
reluctance to tackle inflation or to halt
both the downward spiral in the lira and
the erosion of foreign currency reserves.
Yesterday’s decision was seen by
many as evidence that Mr Erdogan, a
staunch opponent of high interest rates,
had given the incoming governor a man-
date to act — at least in the short term —
Africa
Nigeria central bank under
fire amid protest crackdown
Neil Munshi — Lagos
Nigeria’s central bank has denied that
it is targeting leaders of the anti-police
brutality movement that brought
Lagos, Africa’s largest city, to a stand-
still last month.
The bank has blocked accounts held by
protest leaders, prompting them to sue
to have their accounts unfrozen.
“I have been tagged a terrorist . . . a
smear to my reputation simply because
I spoke out against police brutality,” said
Rinu Oduala, 22, one of the organisers of
protests in Lagos, whose name is listed
in the court filing. She said she had also
received death threats.
In its response to the Abuja federal
high court, the bank said it had been
asked to block the accounts as part of an
investigation into the activities of 20
people and organisations “who are
alleged to be involved in suspected ter-
rorism financing”.
A senior central bank official told the
Financial Times that the bank was com-
plying with a routine request from the
State Security Service, which asked for
the accounts to be frozen pending an
investigation. The government did not
respond to a request for comment.
“We were approached as an agency
that has oversight over the financial sys-
tem to aid in an investigation; it’s that
simple,” the official said. “Obviously
they are presumed innocent until found
Drug safety
Oxford vaccine trial shows
to stabilise the currency and tempt for-
eign capital back into Turkey.
Ehsan Khoman at MUFG bank said
the central bank had needed to “wow
markets, restore credibility and predict-
ability” and had done “exactly that”.
Yerlan Syzdykov of asset manager
Amundi described the decision as “une-
quivocally a good result”.
The rise, which was in line with the
expectations of economists surveyed by
Bloomberg, takes the one-week repo
rate to slightly higher than the average
interest rate that the central bank had
been charging to supply funding to the
financial system in recent weeks.
It had been using a complicated
system of multiple rates that appeared
to aim to tighten monetary conditions
without incurring the wrath of the presi-
dent, and had brought the effective cost
of funding provided by the bank to
14.8 per cent by Wednesday.
An announcement by the bank that it
would provide all funding through the
one-week repo rate means that, after
yesterday’s decision, the actual increase
in the interest rate it levies will be only
0.2 percentage points.
Nevertheless, the move was wel-
comed by markets as a sign that the
bank was returning to a conventional
approach to monetary policy.
Additional reporting by Adam Samson in
London
guilty but . . . allow people to do their
jobs and finish the investigation.”
Human Rights Watch claims that
between freezing accounts and fining
local media over coverage of the Lagos
protests “authorities appear to have
used coercive financial measures to sup-
press protests against police brutality
and independent media reporting”.
Activists have accused the Nigerian
government of a crackdown on organis-
ers of mass protests against the federal
Street anger:
Lagos protests
over police
brutality brought
the city to a
standstill
Special Anti-Robbery Squad. The unit
has faced claims of rights violations.
Eromosele Adene, a musician who
helped organise protests in Lagos, was
granted bail on Tuesday after being held
for 11 days without charge. Authorities
also temporarily seized the passport of
Moe Odele, a lawyer who helped organ-
ise legal aid for protesters.
Gatefield, an Abuja-based communi-
cations firm, had an account dedicated
to funding independent journalism fro-
zen. “It’s very clear the government is
trying to clamp down on all the actors
and instil fear,” said Adewunmi
Emoruwa, lead strategist at Gatefield.

“If I pay [bonds], the moment I pay,
the other creditors are going to put
dynamite under my legs and blow off
my legs. I’m gone. I can’t walk any
War crimes inquiry
Australian troops accused of murdering Afghan civilians
Jamie Smyth — Sydney
Australian special forces were allegedly
involved in the murder of 39 civilians in
Afghanistan and engaged in “blood-
ing”, where commanders made junior
soldiers execute prisoners to achieve a
first kill, an inquiry by defence chiefs
has found.
The four-year war crimes investigation
by the Inspector-General of the Austral-
ian Defence Force recommended that
36 incidents involving 19 current or
former soldiers be referred to the fed-
eral police for investigation and poten-
tial prosecution.
A heavily redacted version of the
report, published yesterday, detailed
how some Special Air Service regiment
commanders fostered a “warrior cul-
ture” and one of dishonesty, including
allegedly planting weapons on unarmed
civilians to justify the deaths.
“None of these are incidents of disput-
Nov 2020
2019
Source: Refinitiv
able decisions made under pressure in
the heat of battle,” said Major General
Paul Brereton, author of the report,
which interviewed 423 witnesses.
Canberra has apologised to the
Afghanistan government for the alleged
war crimes and pledged that accounta-
bility would be the cornerstone of the
defence department’s response to the
inquiry.
More than 39,000 Australian soldiers
have served in Afghanistan alongside
US and other Nato troops in what is the
Pacific nation’s longest-running war.
A ruling by the International Criminal
Court in The Hague in March gave ICC
prosecutors the right to open investiga-
tions into alleged war crimes perpe-
trated by US and other military forces in
Afghanistan.
Australia’s IGADF report found that
while “poor command and leadership”
played a role in the alleged war crimes,
the authors concluded that it would be a
22
Nov
“gross distortion” to lay the blame pri-
marily at this level. There was no evi-
dence that Joint Operations Command
or Australia’s defence headquarters
knew of the commission of war crimes.
“While . . . commanders at troop,
squadron and Special Operations Task
Group level must bear some responsi-
bility for the events that happened ‘on
their watch’, the criminal behaviour of a
few was commenced, committed, con-
tinued and concealed at the patrol com-
mander level, that is, at corporal or ser-
geant level,” the report’s authors wrote.
The report said there was credible
information that junior troops were
required by their patrol commanders to
shoot a prisoner to achieve the soldier’s
first kill.
“Typically, the patrol commander
would take a person under control and
the junior member . . . would then be
directed to kill the person under con-
trol. ‘Throwdowns’ [foreign weapons]
election . . . when they manage to win
the election, then they are going to have
to take the hard decisions.”
Additional reporting by Tommy Stubbing-
ton in London
See FT Big Read
would be placed with the body, and a
‘cover story’ was created for the pur-
poses of operational reporting and to
deflect scrutiny,” the report said. “This
was reinforced with a code of silence.”
The inquiry was instigated by defence
authorities after Samantha
Crompvoets, a military sociologist,
interviewed soldiers for a separate
report about the culture of special
forces. During the course of her
research, she heard disturbing allega-
tions about conduct in Afghanistan,
which she took to the defence chiefs.
Ms Crompvoets told the Financial
Times she received reports about a
“blood lust” mentality within the spe-
cial forces, where soldiers allegedly
killed for sport and there was competi-
tion for the most kills on patrols.
“Things that were very much in black
and white illegal,” she said. “This is a big
wake-up call, not just for Australia
forces but for all militaries.”
positive results for elderly
Donato Paolo Mancini — London
The coronavirus vaccine under devel-
opment by Oxford university and
AstraZeneca has elicited a strong
immune response and been shown to
be safe in older adults, a group at dis-
proportionate risk of developing
severe Covid-19.
In phase 2 trial results published in The
Lancet, researchers said the vaccine had
fewer adverse effects in older people
than in younger adults, and that it pro-
duced a similar immune response in
both groups.
The Financial Times first reported on
the promising data last month.
Testing of the Oxford-AstraZeneca
vaccine is at an earlier stage than work
on vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-
BioNTech, which trials suggest could
protect about 95 per cent of people from
infection.
No data have been published on
whether the Oxford-AstraZeneca vac-
cine prevents people from developing
Covid-19. But phase 3 trials measuring
its so-called efficacy are under way with
results expected before the end of the
year. Efficacy is a key metric for regula-
tors weighing approval.
Some vaccines against other diseases
have been shown to generate an
immune system response but one that
was not strong enough to fight off infec-
tion. The Oxford researchers studied
560 healthy adults, including 240 over
the age of 70, and found the vaccine
induced responses in both parts of the
immune system: it provoked a T-cell
response within 14 days of the first dose,
and an antibody response within 28
days.
Oxford’s Sarah Gilbert, a co-author of
the study, said it answered some ques-
tions on the protection of older adults,
whose immune systems are usually
weaker than those of younger people.
“But questions remain about effec-
tiveness and length of protection, and
we need to confirm our results in older
adults with underlying conditions to
ensure that our vaccine protects those
most at risk of severe Covid-19,” she said.
Because the study enrolled partici-
pants during lockdown earlier this year,
when vulnerable individuals were
required to self-isolate, it did not
include those who had other illnesses.
Almost all participants were white and
non-smokers.
Mene Pangalos, executive vice-presi-
dent for biopharmaceutical research
and development at AstraZeneca, said it
was “essential” that any vaccine be
effective across a broad age range.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna
spurred widespread optimism after
announcing better than expected phase
3 efficacy figures for their jabs.
4 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Friday 20 November 2020

INTERNATIONAL
global insight
Employment
washington

Virus deals further blow to US jobs Edward

New unemployment
claims increase for
first time in five weeks
Mamta Badkar — New York
The US saw 742,000 claims for first-
time unemployment benefits last week,
with the number of new applications
rising for the first time in five weeks as
the country reels from a record rise in
Florida and New Jersey recorded the
biggest declines.
Overall, 20.3m people are receiving
jobless benefits of some kind since the
crisis began in March, according to data
that are reported with a two-week lag.
The data suggest the US economic and
labour market recoveries are threat-
ened by the rise in infections. “The
back-up in claims this week is some-
what troubling, and likely indicative of
what we are going to see in the next few
Luce
ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, ‘The back- Congress has failed to reach a deal for
which health officials have warned has a new stimulus package. Jay Powell,
up in claims
the potential to quicken the pandemic’s
already rapid spread.
While Covid-19 vaccines being devel-
is troubling,
Federal Reserve chair, has repeatedly
pressed for additional aid to bolster the
economy. The central bank has pledged
Biden takes gamble in
oped by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech
are expected to receive approval before
and likely
indicative
to keep rates close to zero, and Richard
Clarida, vice-chair, recently signalled
quest to re-embrace
the end of the year, economists have
warned it will take a while to reverse the
blow dealt to the labour market, busi-
of what we
possible changes to the Fed’s bond-buy-
ing programme as policymakers seek to
keep the recovery going.
global democracy
nesses and investment.
are going to While the unemployment rate has
Meanwhile the stress to the economy see in the more than halved since its coronavirus

coronavirus cases.
Weekly jobless claims increased by
31,000, alongside a rise of 23,863 in
claims for federal pandemic unemploy-
ment assistance (PUA), the labour
department said yesterday. Economists
had expected claims of 707,000 in the
week ending November 14, according to
a Thomson Reuters survey.
The report showed increases in
unemployment claims in Louisiana,
Texas and Massachusetts, while Illinois,
Middle East
weeks ahead,” said Thomas Simons,
economist at Jefferies.
The US is experiencing a surge in
coronavirus infections — 163,075 new
cases were reported on Wednesday, tak-
ing the total number of infections past
11.3m.
A number of cities and states have
introduced new restrictions on indoor
gatherings and economic activity in
response. New York City has closed pub-
lic schools in an effort to curb the spread
is set to be even more pronounced as the
PUA scheme, which expands eligibility,
and the pandemic emergency unem-
ployment compensation (PEUC), which
provides an extra 13 weeks’ insurance to
those who have exhausted their bene-
fits, will expire at the end of the year.
Yesterday’s report showed the
number receiving PEUC rose more than
233,000 to almost 4.38m at the end of
last month. That figure stood at about
1.4m at the end of summer.
W
next few crisis peak of 14.9 per cent in April, the
pace of job creation has slowed and the
weeks’ total number of jobs is more than 10m
below pre-pandemic levels.
“Nothing is more important than pro-
viding a bridge to better times for those
displaced from work by Covid-19,” said
Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at The
Century Foundation, a progressive
think-tank. “Failing to do so will
unleash untold hardship and ultimately
slow the economic recovery.”
hat better way to herald regime change in
America than for it to re-embrace global
democracy? That is Joe Biden’s plan. He
wants to host a global “summit for democ-
racy”, possibly within 100 days of his inau-
guration. It would be hard to think of a step that could bet-
ter drive home that Donald Trump is no longer running
the world’s superpower. If Mr Trump personifies the age of
global strongmen, all Mr Biden need do is host a party that
pointedly excludes them.
But his strategy entails serious risk at home and abroad.
Reincorporating the democracy creed into US foreign pol-
icy would distance him not only from Mr Trump, but also
from Barack Obama, his former boss. The last US presi-
dent to talk about spreading democracy was George W
Bush, whose 2003 Iraq war discredited the idea on both
left and right. Mr Obama won his party’s nomination

Pompeo West Bank visit stirs diplomatic dispute
Mehul Srivastava — Tel Aviv
Mike Pompeo visited a Jewish-owned
vineyard in the Israeli-occupied West
Bank yesterday, becoming the first US
secretary of state to visit the sprawling
settlements regarded as illegal by the
international community.
The visit to the Psagot winery — which
in February named a vintage after Mr
Pompeo in recognition of his reversal of
Washington’s historical objection to
Israeli settlements — was condemned
by the Palestinians. Protesters gathered
outside with balloons ahead of his visit.
Mr Pompeo’s two-and-a-half-years at
the helm of US diplomacy has seen a
departure from decades of policy
designed to discourage the expansion of
Jewish settlement in land on which Pal-
estinians hope to build a future state.
Donald Trump, the US president, and
Mr Pompeo, who is thought to be con-
sidering a 2024 run for the presidency,
have sought to bolster their Christian
evangelical base by indulging rightwing
Israeli positions.
Mr Trump’s close relationship with
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime
minister, has underscored the most pro-
Israeli US administration in decades.
Christian Zionists who vote Republican
subscribe to a prophecy that Jewish con-
trol of Judea and Samaria — the biblical
names for the occupied West Bank —
will hasten the Second Coming of Christ.
For Palestinians, yesterday’s visit was
a “final twist of Trump’s knife”, said a
person close to Mohammad Shtayyeh,
the prime minister, who has welcomed
the election of Joe Biden as a return to
the studied neutrality the US has hith-
erto sought to project in one of the most
intractable conflicts.
“We had hoped that the foot was
finally off our neck,” the senior Palestin-
ian official said. “Trump and his friends
want to kick us a final time before they
leave, maybe just for fun, maybe to get
more votes.”
Mr Pompeo said yesterday that the US
would designate as anti-Semitic
a global boycott movement
that seeks to stigmatise Israel
for settlement building.
“It’s just wonderful,” said
Mr Netanyahu. “The people
of the book have never had a
better friend.”
Given that US courts have
upheld boycotts as constitu-
Mike Pompeo, tional, the move is largely symbolic.
right, with The choice of Psagot for Mr Pompeo’s
Israeli foreign visit is strategic. Partially built on land
minister Gabi expropriated from Palestinian land-
Ashkenazi owners, Psagot lost a 2019 case at the
yesterday. European Court of Justice, which upheld
Below, Pompeo an EU policy of labelling products from
wine from Israeli settlements differently from
Psagot those made in Israel.
Patrick SemanskyAP
Four US senators, including Kelly
Loeffler of Georgia, have appealed to Mr
Trump to overturn a Clinton-era policy,
currently not being enforced, that could
allow settlement products sold in the US
to be labelled as “Made in Israel”.
White evangelicals make up a third of
the electorate in Georgia, which is re-
running a Senate race in January that
will decide the balance of power in the
US legislature.
Over the past four years, the
Trump administration has pushed
through a series of policies that have
infuriated the Palestinians. Mr
Trump moved the US embassy to
Jerusalem, recognised Israel’s
annexation of the Syrian Golan
Heights and cut all aid to Palestinian ref-
ugees. Israel normalised relations with
the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain
under a US-brokered deal that made no
mention of Palestinian sovereignty.
In preparation for Mr Biden’s presi-
dency and desperate for a shift in US
policy, Palestinians last week renewed a
US-backed security agreement with
Israel that was abandoned as relations
deteriorated.
“The Palestinians were trying to look
for a ladder down from this very high
tree that they climbed up to,” said Neri
Zilber, author of State With No Army,
Army With No State, a book on the secu-
rity agreement.
“What they were waiting for really, as
were many people all over the world,
was the US election and they were hop-
ing beyond hope that Joe Biden would be
elected.”
The fate of the Palestinian project has
often been prey to the vicissitudes of US
domestic politics. Barack Obama, dur-
ing a 2013 visit to the Holy Land, visited
the other side of the fence from the
Psagot winery, meeting Palestinian
leaders at a youth centre in the Arab
community of al-Bireh.
“We want to tell our fellow Ameri-
cans, that when you drink [Psagot’s]
wine, you are drinking the blood of the
Palestinian people,” said Abdel Jawad
Saleh, an American citizen who has
served as mayor of al-Bireh.
On the day of the US elections, Israel
destroyed an EU-supported Palestinian-
Bedouin village in the West Bank. Last
week, it announced published tenders
to build a new neighbourhood east of
the 1949 armistice line that ended the
1948 war. This would further separate
East Jerusalem from other Arab neigh-
bourhoods.
“Like many issues of building in the
areas within Jerusalem but outside of
the 1949 armistice line, there are a lot of
sensitivities,” said Lior Schillat, direc-
tor-general of the Jerusalem Institute
for Policy Research.
The deadline for the bids is two days
before Mr Biden’s inauguration as presi-
dent in January.
partly because he had opposed the Iraq invasion, in con-
trast to Hillary Clinton who voted for it. Mr Biden also
voted to authorise the Iraq war.
One of Mr Trump’s merits to the 2016 Republican base
was his contempt for the “forever wars” in Iraq and else-
where that he blamed on a Bush-riddled establishment.
Whatever else can be said about Mr Trump’s foreign pol-
icy, he did not start new wars (there are still 60 days to go).
When historians look back on America’s early 21st century
politics, my hunch is they will say Mr Bush did more harm
to global democracy than Mr Trump.
Either way, Mr Biden is making two bets. The first is that
the world will still see US democracy as a credible example
to follow. Twenty years
ago few would have
doubted it. Twice since,
One bet is that the
however, the US has elec­- world will still see
ted a president who won a
lower share of the popu-
US democracy
lar vote (in 2000 and as a credible
2016). It is striking that
none of the countries that
example to follow
have adopted demo­cracy
since the end of the cold war has chosen the US constitu-
tional model. Pupils the world over are now familiar with
the weakness of the US electoral college and Senate malap-
portionment. Mr Biden’s victory shows that America’s sys-
tem still works. But it will take more than that to restore
the world’s faith in it.
Mr Biden’s second bet is that a club of democracies could
work together effectively. One suggestion is that Mr Biden
convene a “D-10” (10 democracies) of the G7 economies
plus India, South Korea and Australia. Any club to which
India belongs usually fails to agree on the rules. Further,
Narendra Modi, its Hindu nationalist premier, is steadily
turning India into the world’s largest illiberal democracy.
And no Biden adviser would include Hungary’s Viktor Or­-
ban, the man who embraced the term illiberal democracy.
The real purpose of Mr Biden’s club would be to counter
China’s increasingly overt ideological rivalry with the west.
As China’s largest neighbour, India’s support will be critical
to America’s ability to succeed in the so-called new cold
war. To keep India on board, Mr Biden would have to
refrain from criticising Mr Modi’s efforts to downgrade its
Muslim minority to second-class status. From the start,
Mr Biden would thus be accused of double standards.
So what would be the point of his club? The idea works in
theory. As the world’s biggest autocracy, China’s closest
ties are with other brutal regimes, notably Myanmar, Paki-
stan, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran and Russia. Authoritar-
ians have had a good 21st century so far, prompting talk of
a worldwide “democratic recession”. In practice, it would
be hard to make it work. Mr Biden could set up a symbolic
club that meets once a year. Or he could be more hawkish
by offering benefits: market access, freedom from sanc-
tions etc, that he would deny to non-democracies.
The aim, as Ben Judah and Erik Brattberg write on web-
site Foreign Policy, would be to update the British quip
about the original purpose of Nato “to keep the Soviet
Union out, the Americans in and Germany down”. The goal
of Mr Biden’s club would be “to keep China in check, India
close and the US steady in the turbulent years to come”.
The framing is sharp. In practice, however, Mr Biden’s
priority should be to revive democracy in America.
edward.luce@ft.com

Legal Notices
US election

Democrats’ low-key star followed the data to ensure success

Courtney Weaver — Washington
In the chaotic days that followed the
November 3 US presidential election,
one person seemed unusually calm:
Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the manager
of Joe Biden’s victorious campaign.
In the drawn-out period between elec-
tion day and November 7, when the race
was called for the Democrat, Ms O’Mal-
ley Dillon emerged from behind the
scenes to deliver a series of “election
protection” briefings in which she re­-
turned again to her north star: the data.
Armed with a PowerPoint slideshow
of statistics and graphs, she methodi-
cally explained that Mr Biden was on
track to win enough battleground states
to capture the White House.
In so doing, she pointedly declined to
engage with the bare-knuckle tactics of
Donald Trump’s campaign, which
alleged, without evidence, that Demo-
crats had perpetrated mass voter fraud
to steal the election. “We’re just plug-
ging along with our focus on making
sure the votes are counted,” she said.
It was typical of the low-key style pre-
ferred by Ms O’Malley Dillon, a long-
standing operator who has made history
as the first woman to run a victorious
Democratic presidential campaign.
“Jen is guided by the data and is one of
the few people who can see [the overall]
picture as well as a county by county
picture in how to target and mobilise
votes,” said Stephanie Cutter, who
worked with Ms O’Malley Dillon on
Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign. “She
had a strategy and she stuck with it.”
This week, Mr Biden announced that
Ms O’Malley Dillon would enter the
White House with him in January in the
role of deputy chief of staff.
Since his victory, she has been cred-
ited with keeping the campaign’s atten-
tion directed at the “blue wall” states of
Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin,
which flipped back to the Democrat
after voting for Mr Trump in 2016.
That focus meant the campaign did
not pour resources into long-shot states,
most notably Texas, even as prominent
Democrats insisted the Biden team was
letting a huge prize slip away. Polls had
suggested Mr Biden was in touching dis-
tance of clinching the reliably Republi-
can state, but Mr Trump ended up win-
ning comfortably.
When you’re running a campaign,
“everyone is a critic”, said Mary Anne
Marsh, a Democratic strategist. But
Jennifer O’Malley
Dillon: declined to
engage with the
bare-knuckle
tactics of Donald
Trump’s campaign
while others might have “capitulated”
to the pressure, Ms O’Malley Dillon
stood firm. “She kept the blinders on
and worked her plan . . . she executed
relentlessly and it worked.”
The low-key approach stands in con-
trast to some other recent campaign
man­agers. Kellyanne Conway, for in­-
stance, was a frequent fixture on cable
networks when she ran Mr Trump’s
2016 presidential bid, serving as much
as his public messenger as a hands-on
executive.
“In these campaigns when you’re in
charge, the media wants to make you
into a media figure,” said Steve Elmen-
dorf, a Democratic lobbyist and fund-
raiser and deputy campaign manger for
John Kerry’s 2004 presidential bid.
“[Ms O’Malley Dillon] seemed to be
very disciplined about how to use her
time to run [the campaign] and not
have the ego of, ‘Oh well, I should [be in
front of the press]’.”
The campaign was not without its
critics. Some said the lack of a physical
ground game, a decision taken because
of the pandemic, hurt Mr Biden; Repub-
licans attribute the fact that Mr Trump
outperformed his polls to their superior
door-knocking operation.
But Ms O’Malley Dillon never believ­-
ed those polls. As pundits and traders
priced in a blowout Biden victory, hers
was a voice of caution. “Here’s the hon-
est truth: those are inflated national
public polling numbers.” Once again, it
turned out that her data were right.
Friday 20 November 2020 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 5
6 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Friday 20 November 2020

Antonio Weiss March ructions put the spotlight back on role of non-bank institutions in trading y MARKETS INSIGHT

Amazon drone Cold steel Thyssenkrupp takes axe to 5,000

more jobs after falling to annual loss of €5.5bn
UK watchdog
holds key to
ambitions fly Virgin’s £31bn
tie-up with O2
through a Javier Espinoza — Brussels
Kate Beioley and
Nic Fildes — London

rough patch The UK competition watchdog has

taken full control over the review of a
proposed £31bn merger between Vir-
gin Media and telecoms operator O2
and agreed to fast-track its probe after
both companies sought to speed up the
process when it moved to London from
3 R&D and production staff shed Brussels.

3 Retailer resorts to external help
Dave Lee — San Francisco
Amazon is laying off dozens of R&D and
manufacturing staff working on its
delivery drone project and has turned to
outside help to get its much-delayed
ambitions off the ground.
In recent weeks the company has
reached tentative deals with two com-
panies to build parts for what has been
billed as a future delivery method for
smaller packages.
Terms of the agreements with FACC
Aerospace of Austria and Aernnova
Aerospace of Spain were being finalised,
said a person familiar with the plans.
Additional deals with third parties
Prime Air plans to operate
a drone that can fly up to
15 miles and carry parcels
weighing up to five pounds
could be reached soon, the person said,
following Amazon’s “request for pro-
posal”, sent to a number of companies in
the drone sector over the past year.
Deliveries at scale by drone, envi-
sioned by Jeff Bezos, founder of Ama-
zon, in 2013, are still a “years away”
prospect, said the person, with develop-
ment set to progress in the new year.
Last year, Jeff Wilke, Amazon’s head
of worldwide consumer business, told
an audience in Las Vegas that drone
deliveries were imminent. “We expect
to scale Prime Air both quickly and effi-
ciently, delivering packages via drone to
customers within months,” he said in a
blog post accompanying his address.
Amazon characterised the lay-offs as
part of a transitional phase for the unit,
which this year received US regulatory
approval to begin limited testing.
“As part of our regular business oper-
ations, we are reorganising one small
team within our larger Prime Air organ-
isation to allow us to best align with the
needs of our customers and the busi-
ness,” said the company. “For affected
employees, we are working to find roles
in the areas where we are hiring that
best match their experience and needs.”
Amazon would not disclose how
many staff it now had working on the
drone project. At the time of writing, the
company’s public-facing recruitment
site lists 57 open roles on Prime Air,
mostly related to software and systems.
FACC and Aernnova specialise in
making composite components for Air-
bus, Boeing, Bombardier and other avi-
ation clients. Neither responded to
requests for comment on the deals.
Amazon’s Prime Air will operate a
hexagonal electric drone that can fly up
to 15 miles and carry packages weighing
under five pounds, according to details
released in mid-2019.
In March, Amazon said it was bring-
ing in David Carbon, a former Boeing
executive, to replace Gur Kimchi, who
had led Prime Air for seven years.
David Benowitz, head of research at
DroneAnalyst, said Amazon is trailing
what is now a highly competitive field,
with rival Walmart set to begin trialling
deliveries with Zipline, a drone com-
pany in San Francisco. “It’s not meeting
the lofty goals and the original vision
quite yet,” he said.
Amazon’s intended approach is to
land its drone near the customer’s
home, presenting obvious concerns
around safety.
The US Federal Aviation Administra-
tion is making prospective delivery
drone operators meet strict criteria in
order to begin even limited testing. In
August, Amazon received its Part 135
certification allowing some highly con-
trolled testing to begin, though the com-
pany has not yet shared details of where
it intends to run its flights.
The group said it expected a further loss of €1bn this financial year as restructuring costs spiral — Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters
Joe Miller — Frankfurt
Thyssenkrupp fell to a full-year loss
of €5.5bn and said it would cut 5,000
more jobs as pressure mounts to
speed up the sale of underperform-
ing businesses.
The Essen-based company, which
employs 100,000 people, warned that
it expected a further loss of at least
€1bn this financial year as restructur-
ing costs spiral.
Unable to escape a steady decline
over the past decade, Thyssenkrupp
sold its lifts business to a private
equity consortium for €17bn in Feb-
ruary, to help pay down debt and fund
pension liabilities.
The group has continued to bleed
cash in its remaining businesses. Free
cash flow, excluding any income from
mergers, collapsed to negative €5.5bn
in its most recent financial year,
which ran to the end of September.
Having cycled through three chief
executives in 15 months, Thyssen­-
krupp is under the leadership of an
outsider, former Bosch executive
Martina Merz, who gave up the chair-
manship of the company’s supervi-
sory board to take the executive reins
in October 2019.
In May, Ms Merz outlined a restruc-
turing plan that would result in sev-
eral smaller businesses — with com-
bined sales of more than €6bn a year
and 20,000 workers — leaving the
group, and the remaining units being
run under a loose holding structure.
The extra job cuts announced yes-
terday bring the total number of roles
at risk to 11,000, almost 7,000 of them
in Germany. Thyssenkrupp refused
to rule out forced redundancies. “The
next steps could be more painful than
the previous ones,” Ms Merz said, “but
we will have to take them.” Her “pri-
mary objective” was to win back the
confidence of capital markets and
“stop the bleeding”.
Shares in Thyssenkrupp, which had
already lost roughly 80 per cent of
their value over the past three years,
fell 3.4 per cent yesterday.
Last month the group revealed it
had received an approach for its steel
unit, which employs 27,000 and made
a loss of €946m in the last financial
year, from UK mogul Sanjeev Gupta’s
Liberty Steel. Neither group disclosed
details of the approach.
The division, which has been strug-
gling to compete against cheaper
imports, has been hit by its reliance
on business from the car industry.
The sector, which is forecast to con-
tract by almost a quarter in 2020,
accounts for roughly 40 per cent of
Thyssenkrupp’s steel sales.
The group is in exploratory discus-
sions with other steelmakers, includ-
ing Sweden’s SSAB, and is talking
to Berlin on potential financing, say
people familiar with the matter.
Lex page 18
Liberty Global and Spanish group Tele-
fónica, the respective owners of Virgin
Media and O2, struck a landmark deal
to combine their British operations in
May, a tie-up that would possibly have
been overseen by the European Com-
mission. The O2-Virgin agreement is
expected to reshape UK telecoms by
uniting the country’s second-largest
broadband network with the largest
mobile operator.
“These are incredibly important UK
markets, that continue to evolve, and
the deal needs to be carefully reviewed
to make sure that consumers are pro-
tected,” Andrea Coscelli, chief executive
of the Competition and Markets
Authority, said yesterday.
The watchdog said it would fast-track
the process unless it received any objec-
tions to that decision. It is accepting
views on how the deal could affect com-
petition until November 26.
News that the CMA would oversee the
process and that Virgin and O2 had
requested that it go straight to an in-
depth probe, for a decision by the mid-
dle of next year, was first reported by the
Financial Times.
Liberty Global and Telefónica con-
firmed in a joint statement the request
to fast-track the process. “We have been
in close contact with the CMA and
Ofcom throughout this process and are
confident the transition will be seam-
less. Our view remains that this trans-
action is pro-competitive and we con-
tinue to expect closing around the mid-
dle of next year,” they added.
However, Brussels’ decision to refer
the deal to the CMA still comes as a blow
to the telecoms groups, who had been
hoping for a swift decision from the
commission.
Both companies are banking on the
CMA treating the merger of the cable
broadband and mobile companies as
similar to BT’s £12.5bn takeover of
mobile group EE in 2016, which was
cleared by the watchdog without requir-
ing any remedies.

Contracts & Tenders

Google adopts bank manager role in mobile deal with US lenders
credit unions in the US. Apple’s ground-
Inside business breaking credit card with Goldman
Sachs has become the model for
Technology arrangements like this, as well as a
strong motivator for other financial
Richard institutions to get off the sidelines and
find a way to work with Big Tech.
Waters Google’s would be the first regular Big
Tech bank account, though almost cer-
tainly not the last.
A lot has changed since Google first
showed up at the financial services
There is an obvious precedent for this
alliance. It closely follows the deals that
Apple struck for the iPhone more than a
decade ago, when mobile operators
lined up to sell the device. Those
arrangements left the tech company
with full control over the user experi-
ence, and it turned the phone company
— or in this case, the bank — into the
provider of an essential, but increas-
ingly undifferentiated, “back-end”
service.

A
decade ago, when the big-
gest consumer tech compa-
nies first showed an inter-
est in financial services, the
banking world dug in for an
all-out war. Now that Big Tech is finally
stepping deeper into finance, hostilities
between the two camps have eased. But
given the scale of the tech companies’
ambition, that is unlikely to be the end
of the story.
Google’s attempt to promote a new
style of mobile bank account is the latest
sign that a new rapprochement is in full
swing. Like a number of the internet
giant’s services over the years, Google
Pay has been through long fallow peri-
ods without much in the way of innova-
tion. It is used on only around 4 per cent
of the 2.5bn Android devices around the
world, according to Statista.
The app is now going through a two-
stage revamp. The first, this week, adds
new bells and whistles to make it more
engaging as Google tries to make up for
lost time. It will now be a place to keep
tabs on your bank and credit card
accounts, as well as a conduit for Google
to serve up personalised offers from
merchants.
The second step is the more ground-
breaking. Next year, users will be able to
open and manage a mobile bank
account directly from the app, starting
with Citibank and 10 other banks and
party. At the time, smartphones were in
their infancy, and the tech companies
were open about their goal of disrupting
any industry they entered. The
upheaval they had already caused in the
media world marked them out as unre-
liable partners.
Distrust of Big Tech is still strong. But
the reach of their mobile technology
and the changing
expectations of Distrust of Big Tech
users have made
them impossible to remains strong but the
ignore, and finan- reach of their mobile
cial services of all
kinds are being technology has made
reimagined for a them impossible to ignore
younger genera-
tion brought up on smartphones.
The outlines of the Google arrange-
ment highlight the common ground
that tech and financial services compa-
nies have found. The banks will main-
tain the accounts, while Google Pay will
act as the “front end” for accessing and
managing them. That means the user
experience will essentially be owned —
and branded — by Google.
The account will keep the branding of
the bank, but opportunities for differen-
tiation seem minimal. The accounts —
all carrying the name Plex, as in Citi Plex
— will need to meet a set of specifica-
tions set by Google, for instance, no fees
and no minimum balance.
As AT&T found after striking the first
partnership with Apple for the iPhone,
though, there is still a lot to gain from
tapping a big new market. For Citibank,
this could become a way to access to
retail deposits at scale — as well as to
draw in millions of new customers.
Keeping the ability to cross-sell other
financial products to Plex account hold-
ers will be key. The bigger question is
how far Google will want to go in serving
all of its users’ financial needs.
For now, it may own the customer
experience, but it won’t own the cus-
tomer. The transaction data remains
with the bank, and Google’s ability to
use it is severely limited. Only in one
narrow way — and then, only if a user
opts in — will it get to make use of trans-
action data, to serve up personalised
offers from other merchants inside the
Pay app. A full understanding of its
users’ financial lives would be hugely
valuable to Google in its broader adver-
tising business.
For now, tech companies such as
Google see much more to gain from
working with the banks than trying to
take them on. Their willingness to turn
these into lasting relationships of
mutual interest will be an important
test of how trustworthy they will seem
to other industries in future.
richard.waters@ft.com
Friday 20 November 2020 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 7
8 ★ †
Technology
Joyy shares hit after Muddy Waters attack
Short seller makes fraud
accusation days after
sale of platform to Baidu
Mercedes Ruehl — Singapore
Ryan McMorrow — Beijing
Shares in Joyy, the Chinese technology
group, fell as much as 26 per cent after a
short seller labelled its livestreaming
site a fraud, in a move that is likely to
further hurt investor confidence in US-
listed mainland internet groups.
The accusation was contained in a
report published by Muddy Waters on
Wednesday, just days after Baidu, the
big Chinese tech company, announced a
Retail
IVC eyes float
as investors
look to tap
petcare boom
Judith Evans and Kaye Wiggins
London
Veterinary services group IVC Eviden-
sia is examining a possible sale or list-
ing in what could become one of Lon-
don’s largest recent IPOs as sharehold-
ers seek to tap into investor zeal for the
global petcare sector.
IVC Evidensia, whose biggest investors
are private equity group EQT and
Nestlé, has appointed bankers at Gold-
man and Jefferies to plan a listing that
could take place early next year, three
people familiar with the situation said.
At least one bank has told the com-
pany it could fetch an equity valuation
of £10bn, one of the people said, adding
that it had debt of £2bn, while another
source put the figure closer to £1.5bn.
The business had an enterprise value
of €3bn in February last year, EQT said
at the time.
A listing at that estimated valuation
would rank among the UK’s biggest in
the past few years. The Hut Group, a
Manchester-based health, beauty and
nutrition retailer, had an opening valua-
tion of about £5.4bn when it listed in
September.
But IVC Evidensia shareholders may
opt for a sale either to a private equity
group or a rival company, the people
said, adding that no final decisions had
been made. The potential sale or listing
was first reported by Sky News.
EQT has owned northern European
veterinary group Evidensia since 2014
and UK-based Independent Vetcare
since 2016; it merged the two in 2017.
After continuing to buy up veterinary
practices and consolidate their back-of-
fice operations, it now employs 19,000
staff across 11 countries. The group has
annual revenues above £1bn, said a per-
son close to the company.
Former WHSmith chief executive
Kate Swann was brought in to chair the
group in 2019. Another former head of
the stationery group, Stephen Clarke,
joined as chief executive this year.
The potential listing comes as consu­-
mer goods and private equity groups
pile into petcare and veterinary services
on the back of a global rise in pet owner-
ship and in spending on dogs and cats.
That trend, fuelled in part by millen-
nials delaying having children, has been
heightened in the pandemic as home-
working has driven demand for pets.
Vets have been forced to adapt, setting
up virtual consultations in lockdowns.
Property
Unibail replaces chief as activists make mark
Leila Abboud — Paris
Unibail-Rodamco Westfield has named
a new chief executive as the activists
who recently fought their way on to the
board of directors begin to put their
mark on Europe’s largest shopping
centre owner.
Christophe Cuvillier, who has been chief
executive since 2013, will be replaced by
Jean-Marie Tritant, who currently
serves as its chief operating officer, on
January 1.
The announcement comes just over a
week after telecoms billionaire Xavier
Niel and former Unibail boss Léon
Bressler, who together own a roughly 5
per cent stake in the group, successfully
convinced other shareholders to back
their campaign.
Their demands were three board
seats, and also to scuttle a proposed
€3.5bn capital increase, which Mr Cuvil-
lier had cast as critical for the group to
pay down its heavy debts. They also
$3.6bn deal to buy YY Live, Joyy’s main-
land Chinese livestreaming platform.
Carson Block, founder of Muddy
Waters, said YY Live was about “90 per
cent fraudulent” and suggested Baidu
was trying to buy growth with an
“almost completely fake business”.
Like livestreams on video app Tik-
Tok, YY features stars who sing and
interact with the platform’s millions of
users. The audience sends virtual gifts
that turn into cash for the streamers.
But Muddy Waters said in the 71-page
report based on a year-long investiga-
tion that paying fans were “almost
entirely bots operating from YY’s inter-
nal network”, its performers gifted
themselves and those who were suppos-
Food & beverage
Grapes hang on a damaged vine in Calistoga, California, which is in the grip of a record fire season that has scorched almost 4m acres — Josh Edelson /AFP/Getty
Naked Wines grapples with threat from wildfires
Patricia Nilsson — london
Worsening wildfires in Australia and
California are becoming a challenge for
Naked Wines, the online retailer, which
is having to seek out winemakers from
more countries and test grapes for
“smoke taint”.
“The winemaking regions that we oper-
ate in have always suffered a degree of
wildfires, but the intensity has
increased in recent years,” James Craw-
ford, chief financial officer, told the
Financial Times.
The London-listed retailer, which
sells wine on subscription in the UK,
Australia and the US, has responded by
diversifying its supply chain of 260 win-
emakers across 20 countries.
It has also increased testing of grapes
grown in areas affected by fires to iden-
tify so-called smoke taint — when chem-
icals from nearby fires impact the fla-
vour.
“I’m not going to pretend it is not a
challenge, but it is a challenge that the
argued that Unibail should sell its US
mall portfolio when market conditions
allowed, instead of doing the heavily dil-
utive share sale.
Mr Niel and Mr Bressler’s victory sur-
prised many in the Paris business elite,
given that such activist campaigns are
rarely successful in France. The star
power of Mr Niel, who is a well-known
technology investor and founder of tele-
coms provider Iliad, paired with Mr
Bressler’s expertise in real estate seems
to have prevailed.
Mr Bressler, who led Unibail for 14
years until 2006, was named as the new
chairman after the vote. Mr Niel joined
the remuneration committee, and their
ally Susana Gallardo, a Catalan busi-
nesswoman, was appointed to the gov-
ernance and nomination committee.
Four other members of the previously
nine-member board resigned when the
activists joined, taking the new total to
eight members.
Investors reacted positively to the
FINANCIAL TIMES
COMPANIES & MARKETS
edly high-earners “in reality only take
home a fraction of their reported totals”.
The allegations come after a turbulent
year for US-listed Chinese tech compa-
nies. An internal inquiry at Luckin Cof-
fee, touted as the mainland’s rival to
Starbucks, uncovered hundreds of mil-
lions of dollars of fabricated sales. The
Baidu-owned video platform iQiyi is
also under investigation by the Securi-
ties and Exchange Commission.
Muddy Waters said Baidu and YY Live
“will be THE test of whether China Inc.
is really just a few bad apples; or,
whether the incessant cheating, lying,
and indifference to US law permeate the
highest echelons of China’s public com-
panies”. It said it held a short position in
industry is adapting to through diversi-
fication and through lab testing before
we make wines,” Mr Crawford said. The
company’s actions meant it could and
would “continue to make nice wine for
people”, he said.
Vineyards are at risk from climate
change, and scientists are warning that
drought, extreme weather and wild-
fires, which all threaten wine crops, are
becoming more intense and frequent as
global temperatures rise.
Kate Calvert, analyst at Investec,
downplayed the risk climate change
posed to Naked Wines, explaining that
the company had been increasing the
number of winemakers it worked with
anyway.
Naked Wines has benefited from rap-
idly changing consumer habits brought
on by the pandemic.
The company said yesterday that
sales rose 80 per cent to £157m in the six
months to September as Covid-19
restrictions meant more people bought
wine online. It upgraded its sales growth
changing of the guard, sending shares
up 12 per cent on Monday when Mr
Bressler was named as board chairman
and media reports said that Mr Cuvel-
lier was likely to be replaced.
But the shares are still down nearly 60
per cent this year, as the Covid-19 pan-
demic forces malls to close and casts
doubt over the retail real estate market.
Unibail’s woes highlight the broader
challenges for owners of commercial
property, and particularly landlords of
malls, whose rental income has plum-
meted as a result of coronavirus.
The pandemic has also accelerated
the shift to ecommerce, which some
investors believe will weaken commer-
cial property companies over time.
“With a change in chair and CEO, we
expect a revised approach to the portfo-
lio, especially in the US business,” Jeffer-
ies analyst Andrew Gill wrote in a note,
adding that Mr Tritant’s time in the US
could prove useful as Unibail seeks to
sell assets there.
Nasdaq-listed Joyy, so it benefited finan-
cially when shares fell.
Baidu declined to comment. Joyy did
not respond to a request for comment.
YY told local media: “The Muddy
Waters report is full of ignorance about
the livestreaming industry and the
livestreaming ecosystem. The report
contains a large number of errors with
unclear logic, confusing data, and
sweeping generalisations.”
Nigel Stevenson, an analyst at Hong
Kong’s GMT Research, said the report
was “credible” and he was not surprised
YY was singled out. “It fits with con-
cerns we have had previously in relation
to YY’s financials,” he said.
The allegations coincide with a White
guidance for the full year to 55 per cent
to 65 per cent.
Naked Wines’ share price rose 5 per
cent in early trading in London, before
sliding just over 1 per cent. It has more
than doubled since March, when the
pandemic prompted many countries
across the world to go into lockdown.
Nick Devlin, chief executive, said the
‘Regions that we operate
in have always suffered a
degree of wildfires, but the
intensity has increased’
past six months had been a “critical
period in the development of the com-
pany”. Naked Wines had increased its
subscriber base by 37 per cent to almost
760,000 people.
Mr Crawford, who in December will
become managing director of the
group’s UK business, said there were
signs that some changes brought on by
Technology
Nvidia boosted by demand for gaming chips
Richard Waters — San Francisco
A new generation of gaming chips,
along with heavy demand for digital
services during the coronavirus pan-
demic, lifted Nvidia’s revenue and
earnings above expectations in the lat-
est quarter.
But shares in the US chipmaker slipped
about 3 per cent during an earnings call
late on Wednesday as investors sorted
through a complex outlook that
revealed the company was fighting
against a number of headwinds even as
it was lifted by strong secular forces
such as the rise of artificial intelligence.
Factors affecting Nvidia’s outlook
included a large order of networking
gear from a Chinese customer —
believed to be Huawei — that was pulled
forward into the latest quarter. While
that boosted the figures, it also meant
that sales from that part of the business
were likely to fall on a sequential basis in
the current quarter, the company said.
House push to ban mainland companies
from US bourses if they do not comply
with US accounting standards. The
report will also add to the scrutiny of
Baidu’s acquisition of YY Live.
The decline of Baidu’s core advertis-
ing business has forced it to develop its
social and livestreaming offering, but it
is up against the likes of ByteDance’s
Douyin and Tencent-backed Kuaishou,
another Beijing-based video service.
YY has acknowledged that growth is
slowing. Its average monthly users fell 4
per cent in the third quarter compared
with a year earlier and paying custom-
ers declined to 4.1m from 4.3m. YY
blamed the fall on Covid-19.
See Lex
the pandemic were “enduring”. One
example being homeworking, which
has made it easier for more people to
sign for goods delivered to their front
door during work hours.
The company did, however, acknowl-
edge there were “significant levels of
political and economic uncertainty” in
its key markets, which include the US
and the UK.
Naked Wines said its pre-tax loss in
the period deepened by £2.7m to
£8.9m. It blamed the slump mainly on a
£4m exceptional charge, which arose
from post-Brexit rules on duty free
imports of alcoholic drinks, lowering
the value it expected from the sale of a
Majestic Wine store in the French bor-
der town of Calais.
Last December, the company sold
Majestic, its store-based division, to
Fortress, an asset manager. Both busi-
nesses have been helped by the corona-
virus pandemic, as people are drinking
more at home rather than at bars and
restaurants.
Jensen Huang, chief executive, said in
an interview with the Financial Times
that Nvidia would have beaten expecta-
tions in the quarter even without this
large order. He also said the company
was under supply constraints for its new
chips for gamers, though he claimed this
was because demand had been “so over-
whelming”.
The pandemic has hurt some parts of
Nvidia’s business, denting sales of chips
to carmakers and for some office appli-
cations. But the setback has been more
than outweighed by a jump in video
gaming this year, as well as greater use of
cloud services in general.
Nvidia’s recent growth spurt has been
fed by huge demand from data centre
customers that use its graphical
processing units to boost the perform-
ance of their machine learning systems.
Data centre sales surpassed gaming —
Nvidia’s traditional business — for the
first time earlier this year and topped off
a stock market rally that has
Friday 20 November 2020
Financials
Women file
gender and
race lawsuit
against Pimco
Chris Flood
Two female Pimco employees have
filed a discrimination lawsuit against
the $2tn US asset manager, alleging
that managers created intolerable
working conditions in an effort to force
them to leave.
Female professionals working for New-
port Beach-based Pimco faced “discrim-
ination in pay and promotion, and suf-
fer other unequal treatment in the
terms and conditions of their employ-
ment based on sex, race and disability”,
according to the lawsuit.
The firm’s male leadership prevented
women from receiving “appropriate
credit for their contributions”, the law-
suit claimed. “Their predominantly
white male colleagues reap the profes-
sional and financial profits that are gen-
erated by Pimco’s financial profession-
als who are women, women of colour
and women suffering disability.”
Lisa Anthony, a manager on the
administrative support team who has
been employed at Pimco since 2007,
alleged that following a series of
absences due to ill health, she was sub-
jected to repeated humiliating verbal
abuse by her line manager in front of
other employees.
Ms Anthony alleged that her com-
plaints to Pimco’s human resources
department were passed back to her
manager, who escalated the harassment
and began false accusations about per-
formance. Ms Anthony further alleged
that she was denied a pay rise in 2018
after being wrongly demoted.
Sue Collazo, vice-president of alterna-
tive operations, who was hired by Pimco
in 2011, alleged that she was subjected
by her line manager to long confronta-
tions in front of other employees. Com-
munications by Ms Collazo about her
manager’s behaviour to Pimco’s HR
department were ignored until male
employees made similar complaints,
the lawsuit said.
Ms Collazo alleged that she was prom-
ised a $10,000 increase in her base sal-
ary in 2017 to bring her pay in line with
male employees at the same level, but
this was later denied because of baseless
complaints about her performance.
Ms Collazo was forced to take leave of
absence as her pre-existing medical
conditions were exacerbated by stress.
Pimco strongly denied all the allega-
tions. “The claims in the filing have no
merit, which Pimco will demonstrate in
court,” said Mike Reid, a spokesperson
at Pimco.
The lawsuit filed in Orange County
on Wednesday follows two similar
complaints over the past two years. In
the previous cases, Stacy Schaus, an
executive vice-president, and Andrea
Martin Inokon, a senior in-house law-
yer, accused Pimco of perpetuating gen-
der discrimination by passing them
over for promotions in favour of less
qualified men.
The case brought by Ms Schaus was
dismissed. The case brought by Ms
Inokon has not been concluded. Mr Reid
said the allegations made in her lawsuit
were “not accurate”.
The lawsuit brought by Ms Anthony
and Ms Collazo also claimed that
white men were over-represented at
every level of Pimco’s management and
leadership structure whereas women
were consistently underpaid and under-
promoted.
Pimco had never appointed an Afri-
can-American as a managing director
and only 20 per cent of these 77 senior
roles were held by women, according to
the lawsuit.
made Nvidia the world’s most valuable
chipmaker.
On Wednesday, though, the company
revealed that demand for its Ampere
chips in gaming personal computers
and consoles accounted for its latest
quarter of outperformance. A 37 per
cent jump in gaming revenue from the
preceding quarter, a bigger bounce than
the 25 per cent the company predicted,
lifted sales of these products to $2.27bn.
That topped the $1.9bn of data centre
sales, representing 8 per cent sequential
growth. However, the data centre mar-
ket still underpinned Nvidia’s robust
year-on-year performance, with sales in
this segment jumping by 162 per cent,
close to the growth rate seen in the pre-
ceding quarter.
Overall, Nvidia’s revenue growth rate
accelerated to 57 per cent, 2 percentage
points higher than the previous quarter
and its strongest growth in two and a
half years. Revenue of $4.73bn beat ana-
lysts’ expectations of $4.41bn.
Friday 20 November 2020 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 9

COMPANIES & MARKETS

Private equity reaps rewards of payments bets

Nexi’s €7.8bn deal for European peer Nets highlights outstanding success of buyout groups’ timely foray into sector
Kaye Wiggins — london
Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli — milan
Just over a decade ago, processing elec-
tronic payments was largely regarded as
a dull back-office function, including by
the banks that did it.
A deal this week to create one of
Europe’s largest payments companies is
a reminder of a group who took a very
different view and stepped in to reap the
rewards: private equity firms.
Italian payments group Nexi acquired
Danish rival Nets for €7.8bn, combining
two businesses that began life in banks
but were then carved out and run by
buyout groups Advent, Bain Capital and
Hellman & Friedman. Milan-based Nexi
snapped up Nets just weeks after strik-
ing a €15bn tie-up with state-backed
domestic competitor Sia.
Payments companies help merchants
accept in-store or online payments,
charging a proportion of the value of
each transaction. With the need to
invest in technology creating high fixed
costs, the payment sector’s model has
unleashed a race for scale well suited to
the dealmaking that underpins the pri-
vate equity industry.
The pandemic has done little to chill
the pace of acquisitions. Almost $32bn
of transactions have been struck in the
European payments industry this year,
up from $8.5bn in the same period in
2019, according to Refinitiv.
The acquisitions have catapulted the
market value of the sector’s biggest
players, including newly expanded Nexi
and French rival Worldline, above those
of some European lenders.
Owning payment companies “has
been one of private equity’s biggest
investment successes ever”, said
Charles Hayes, a partner at law firm
Freshfields, which has advised on deals.
Nexi and Nets were not the private
equity industry’s first foray into pay-
ments, and nor are buyout groups the
only ones to have scrambled for a foot-
hold in a fast-growing market. But their
tangled history illustrates how private
equity stepped in where many banks
had failed to capitalise, just as ecom-
merce and digital payments took off.
In 2014, Advent and Bain snapped up
Nets, itself forged five years earlier from
the merger of two Nordic bank-owned
payments groups. A year later, the
firms, alongside the Italian private
equity group Clessidra, bought Istituto
Centrale delle Banche Popolari Italiane
(ICBPI), founded shortly before the sec-
ond world war by a group of Italian
banks. They renamed it Nexi.
A dizzying whirlwind of takeovers,
take-privates and listings was only just
beginning for Nexi and Nets.
After listing in 2016, Nets was taken
private the next year by a consortium
led by Hellman & Friedman and includ-
ing Advent and Bain. In 2018, Nets
snapped up German payments group
Concardis, also owned by Advent and
equity they invested, according to an
analysis by Peter Morris, an associate
scholar at Oxford university’s Saïd Busi-
ness School. Advent and Bain declined
to comment on the deal’s returns.
The giddy increase in Worldpay’s val-
uation led some politicians to complain
that UK taxpayers suffered a raw deal in
the sale in 2010. Last year NatWest,
until recently known as Royal Bank of
Scotland, got back into the sector with a
service enabling small businesses to
accept card payments in-store or online.
The race for scale is only intensifying
— and not just among the industry’s pri-
vate-equity backed groups. In February,
Worldline agreed to buy rival Ingenico
for €7.8bn. In the US, the $43bn acquisi-
tion of Worldpay by financial tech spe-
cialist Fidelity National Information
Services in early 2019 prompted pan-
icked rivals to get bigger still.
“The process of consolidation will
continue,” said Luca Bassi, a managing
director at Bain Capital who oversaw the
Nexi deal and sits on its board. “There
are a lot of countries where banks
haven’t sold out their business.”
But this year has not been straightfor-
ward for the payments industry, with
the fraud at German group Wirecard
focusing regulators’ attention on the
lighter-touch treatment it enjoys.
At the same time, the economic dis-
ruption unleashed by the pandemic hit
consumer spending, sending revenues
Europe payments M&A soars Coupling of Nets and Nexi of payment groups tumbling by about
Deal value ($bn) Number of deals Deal value ($bn)
22 per cent between January and June,
Bain, Advent, Hellman & Friedman, Nexi lists according to McKinsey — though the
35 100 Clessidra buy ICBPI, Advent and Bain on Borsa Nexi buys industry’s dealmakers say a long-term
later renamed Nexi 2.4 take Nets private 5.3 Italiana 8.2 Nets 9.2 shift towards online and contactless
30 Nets and Nexi
80 payments will ultimately offset that.
25 2010 15 20 “The only thing that’s bad for us is
Advent and Bain Nets buys payments in cash,” said Mr Bassi, exud-
60 buy Nets 3.1 Nets lists on Nasdaq Advent Concardis 6.0
20 ing a confidence that comes from suc-
Copenhagen stock and Bain buy Nexi buys Italian
Worldpay: Advent and Bain’s first foray exchange 4.5 Concardis 0.7 rival Sia 5.0 cessfully riding the payments jugger-
15 40 into European payments grew fast
Fidelity National naut. While some electronic payments
10 Advent and Bain buy Vantiv lists on Worldpay lists on Vantiv buys Information Services generate higher fees than others, he
20 majority stake in New York Stock London Stock Worldpay, renamed buys Worldpay 43.0 said, “everything where cash isn’t there
5 Worldpay 3.2 Exchange 3.6 Exchange 7.4 Worldpay 10.4
is good.”
0 0 In Nexi’s home market of Italy, for
2008 10 15 20 2010 15 20 example, electronic payments repre-
Advent buys majority stake in Fifth Third Bancor payment processing unit (later renamed Vantiv) 0.6 sent only 25 per cent of all transactions,
Sources: Refinitiv; FT research
and Rome has vowed to fight tax eva-
sion by encouraging digital payments.
‘The only Bain. Meanwhile, Nexi hoovered up a investor presentation. After the Nets ment Services Directive, a 2009 piece of Italian The buyout groups will probably sell
series of smaller payments groups deal, 38 per cent of Nexi’s shares will be legislation from the European Commis- payments group down their stakes in the new Nexi busi-
thing that’s before listing in what was Europe’s larg- in public investors’ hands with most of sion that paved the way for non-banks Nexi and ness over the next few years. As they do,
bad for us is est initial public offering of 2019. the remaining held by Cassa Depositi e to provide payments services. Denmark’s Nets the industry that disrupted the banks is
“It has been an incredibly successful Prestiti — the Italian government vehi- The expansion has not been without originated in facing a fresh threat of its own: the pros-
payments sub-segment to focus on — definitely cle that backed Sia — along with Advent, controversy. In 2010, private equity banks but were pect of a technology giant launching a
in cash . . . one of the most interesting we’ve seen in Bain and Hellman & Friedman. made its first major move into Euro- carved out and global rival that, like China’s Alipay,
private equity,” said James Brockle- What few dispute is that the push into pean payments. Advent and Bain Capi- run by buyout offers merchants lower fees — or could
everything bank, managing partner at Advent. “It’s payments has been lucrative. Since tal bought Royal Bank of Scotland’s pay- groups Advent, cut out the intermediary altogether.
where cash a question of focus . . . banks recognise 2008, buyout firms’ investment in the ments business at a £2bn valuation after Bain Capital and That is “a massive risk,” said one pri-
these are good businesses [but] are not payments sector have returned 2.7 EU regulators forced the bank to sell the Hellman & vate equity dealmaker who specialises
isn’t there necessarily in the best position to times the amount of equity invested, unit as a condition of its bailout. Friedman — Giulio in financial services but has not invested
is good’ develop the technology and to spend the compared with 2.1 times for financial By the time the business, renamed Napolitano/Bloomberg
in the payments industry.
money on driving payments as its own services deals and 2.3 times in technol- Worldpay, floated in London in 2015, it “Nobody really knows where pay-
profit centre.” ogy, according to a report this year by commanded a valuation of £6.3bn. Just ments is headed — will it be in the cloud,
The takeovers have left relatively high consultancy Bain & Company. two years later, US payments processor or over blockchain?” he said. “Every-
debts. Nets’ net leverage is 4.8 times, The aggressive inroads into the Euro- Vantiv swallowed it for £9.1bn. Based on body is trying to get as big as possible so
and the combined group with Nexi and pean payments industry by buyout Worldpay’s IPO valuation, the buyout they can influence where payments ulti-
Sia will have 3.3 times, according to an firms were made possible by the Pay- firms made a return of 5.4 times the mately ends up.”

Legal Notices
Technology Media

PlayStation console’s sellout Murdoch group warns over

UK launch angers gamers
Jonathan Eley
The most eagerly anticipated UK con-
sole launch in years descended into
chaos and acrimony yesterday as
retailers sold out of PlayStation 5 con-
soles almost immediately, leaving gam-
ers fuming on social media or paying
inflated prices on eBay.
“Me and my boyfriend have been up
since 7.30. We tried Very, Currys, John
Lewis, Game, Littlewoods and Amazon
and failed with every one,” said Megan
Nagel, a north London resident.
Ms Nagel said the item either did not
appear, or was immediately described
as “out of stock” on the websites of sev-
eral retailers, including Amazon and
Very.
“Overall, I feel like it would be
easier to get one of Willy Wonka’s golden
tickets.”
Currys, part of the Dixons Carphone
group, was due to launch PS5 sales at
9am, but put the launch back to 11am.
By midday, it had admitted defeat and
later confirmed that all of its available
stock had been sold but said “there will
be other chances in the lead-up to
Christmas”.
Argos, another big seller of consumer
electronics, said in a statement that pre-
orders went live on its website last
month and had sold out. “We’re sorry
for any disappointment this may cause
and are encouraging customers to check
back regularly for updates on more
stock.”
John Lewis said it had received plenty
of stock “but as anticipated, the PS5
console has been incredibly popular
with very large numbers of customers
seeking to buy it and it sold out quickly”.
Game, part of Mike Ashley’s Frasers
retail empire, was initially accepting PS5
orders for delivery in December. But it
too ran out of stock.
Amarjit Uppal, of West Bromwich in
the West Midlands, said he had spent
hours trying multiple sites and had
“experienced nothing but crashes”.
“Now I’ve just wasted over two hours
in a [virtual] queue at Game only for it
to be all sold out.”
Katie Cousins, gaming analyst at
Shore Capital, said the launch was
“always going to be a sellout” given that
seven years had elapsed since the PS4
went on sale.
“There’s also the Covid impact,” she
said. “A lot of people have rediscovered
gaming during the lockdowns.”
Sony faced questions this year about
likely availability, given the disruptive
effects of Covid-19 on its Asian manu-
facturing capacity. PS5’s launch is a big
event for the company, whose market-
ing stunts include lighting up a Tokyo
shrine in PlayStation colours and chang-
ing the London Underground logos at
Oxford Circus station opposite rival
Microsoft’s flagship store.
The company declined to comment.
Ms Cousins added that the Microsoft
X-box X and S consoles released over a
week ago had also sold out quickly, but
attracted less media attention — possi-
bly because the Sony product had
launched with a well-received Spider-
man game.
The longer-term success of both sys-
tems will be judged not just by console
sales, but by how many gamers sign up
for subscription packages.
Bertelsmann ‘behemoth’ risk
Alex Barker — London
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has
warned that Bertelsmann will become
an anti-competitive “behemoth of
books” if it acquires the publisher
Simon & Schuster, in an attack on a
rival bidder for the company.
With final offers for the ViacomCBS
publishing arm expected this week,
Robert Thomson, chief executive, noted
the “serious” antitrust issues that arise
should German media group Bertels-
mann prevail and expand the world’s
biggest publishing empire.
“However cute and clever the struc-
ture, if Bertelsmann is their beneficiary
News Corp says ‘serious’
antitrust issues arise if the
German business prevails
in Simon & Schuster fight
[of the Simon & Schuster sale], it will be
a book behemoth,” he told the News
Corp annual shareholder meeting on
Wednesday.
“And this will certainly be a profound
antitrust issue for the entire book indus-
try and, no doubt, for authors around
the world.”
Bertelsmann’s Penguin Random
House already towers over the publish-
ing trade, with about a 25 per cent mar-
ket share in America that is almost twice
that of its nearest rivals. With Simon &
Schuster, one of the top five publishers
in the US, it would hold about a third of
the US market by revenue.
Thomas Rabe, the Bertelsmann chief
executive, has publicly expressed his
interest in Simon & Schuster and is plan-
ning to make an offer this week, poten-
tially with private equity group Atairos
as a financial partner.
Mr Thomson declined to elaborate on
the planned bid by News Corp’s Harper-
Collins, the world’s third biggest book
publisher, saying he would not “specu-
late on speculation and scuttlebutt”.
Several people familiar with the process
told the FT a final offer from News Corp
was expected.
ViacomCBS has sought to set a mini-
mum sale price set at $1.7bn, according
to two people involved in the auction, a
target well in excess of initial expecta-
tions. This has priced out private equity
groups, leaving the contest dominated
by trade buyers such as News Corp and
Bertelsmann.
French media group Vivendi, which
owns a roughly 27 per cent stake in the
world’s second biggest book publisher
Lagardère, is also weighing a bid.
Competition authorities rarely block
five-to-four mergers and Mr Rabe has
said he is confident they would use a
broad view of the competitive operators
in the market. “We looked at this and we
don’t think it is an issue,” Mr Rabe told
the Financial Times in September. “If
you look at the market holistically, par-
ticularly the strength of Amazon, and it
includes self-publishing and the like, we
don’t think this will be an obstacle.”
But HarperCollins and other book
publishers note Bertelsmann would
gain outsized power in specific genres if
it acquired Simon & Schuster, with par-
ticular clout in hardcover fiction in the
US market.
10 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Friday 20 November 2020

COMPANIES & MARKETS

Commodities. Pandemic outlook Cross asset

Lack of clarity
Vaccine hopes raise prospect on Brexit
equivalence
of sustained slide for gold stirs alarm
Philip Stafford — London
Jim Brunsden — Brussels

Traders are ramping up warnings of dis-

ruption in financial markets from Janu-
ary without clear decisions on how the
UK and EU will co-operate after the
Brexit transition period ends.
Some derivatives trading may need to
shift to the US unless the two sides can
come to an agreement over so-called
equivalence that would allow mutual
recognition of regulatory standards,
industry bodies say.
Decisions were due at the end of June,
but the EU has withheld guidance with-
out more clarity from the UK on how far
it intends to diverge from EU rules. With
just six weeks remaining before the cut-
off point, anxiety is rising.
“There are still some glaring gaps that
haven’t been addressed by either the UK
or EU, including equivalence for trading
venues,” said Scott O’Malia, chief execu-
tive of Isda, an industry association for
the derivatives market.
Without equivalence, British and EU
companies may have to trade some
derivatives in the US, he added. “This
will lead to fragmentation and a lack of
efficiency for no apparent benefit . . .
We need certainty as soon as possible.”
The EU and UK have agreed that the
future relationship for financial services
should be settled through each side

Bulls are looking brokerage StoneX, said demand from

Successful Covid drug trials
burnish bets on assets tied to
global economic recovery
Henry Sanderson — london
Rising prospects of a Covid-19 vaccine
are threatening to kill off the bull mar-
ket for gold, after an epic two-year rally
that pushed the precious metal to a
record high in the summer.
Gold prices have already fallen about
10 per cent since their August peak
above $2,000 a troy ounce, as confi-
dence gradually returned to asset mar-
kets. This could be the start of a sus-
tained slide for the metal, after success-
ful results in two trials for Covid-19 vac-
cines emerged this month.
Some bulls have not given up, point-
ing to a possible rise in inflation that typ-
ically boosts the precious metal. But a
recovering global economy dents the
appeal of gold, commonly used as a
haven in times of turmoil. And as inves-
tors also move out of government bonds
for riskier assets, pushing yields higher,
the relative attractiveness of gold —
which offers no income — will be dulled.
Analysts at Macquarie say the “cycli-
cal bull market” for gold has already
come to an end: they compare today to
2013, when a decade-long rally found-
ered as the “crisis of the day subsided
and expectations for further policy eas-
ing diminished”.
The bank expects gold prices to fall to
$1,550 a troy ounce next year — a drop of
about 17 per cent from current levels.
Marcus Garvey, Macquarie’s head of
metals and bulk commodity strategy,
said the winter will see a “tug of
war” between the short-term Covid-19
Gold eclipsed its 2011 peak in a strong rally this year
$ per troy ounce
2005 10
Source: Refinitiv
challenge and the longer-term outlook.
“We’re reasonably constructive on the
global growth outlook for next year, so
we think gold has passed its peak,” he
added.
The recent sell-off has been stoked by
outflows from gold-backed exchange
traded funds, which were a key factor in
the surge in the first half of the year.
Since peaking in mid-October, these
funds’ physical holdings have fallen by
1.9m ounces to 109m, according to
Bloomberg data. Holdings in the largest
such ETF, SPDR Gold Shares, hit their
lowest level since July this week.
Susan Bates, an analyst at Morgan
Stanley, says the bank sees “bear fac-
tors” coming together for gold, such as a
recovering global economy, aided by the
eventual rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine,
and a rise in bond yields.
Some investors are moving into other
precious metals more tied to industrial
demand and therefore likely to benefit
from the post-pandemic recovery.
As gold tumbles, silver, which is used
in solar panels, is on track for a second
consecutive monthly gain. Prices for
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
15 20
platinum, a metal used in catalytic con-
verters, rose to their highest since mid-
September this week.
“The vaccinations will reduce risk
therefore gold is less desirable as a risk
hedge,” said Trevor Raymond, director
of research at the World Platinum
Investment Council, an industry body.
The market may not be able to rely on
central banks to pick up the slack. In
August, these institutions turned net
sellers of gold for the first time in a year
and a half, according to the World Gold
Council.
Instead, offsetting that fall in invest-
ment demand may require India and
China, the world’s largest consumers, to
step up. Buyers in both countries have
been largely absent from gold’s rally this
year, with global jewellery demand fall-
ing by 29 per cent in the third quarter,
according to the WGC.
But the average premium for gold
prices in India and China over interna-
tional prices has recovered to near pre-
pandemic levels, according to Goldman
Sachs.
Rhona O’Connell, an analyst at
to central banks the two countries could pick up just as
and private ETF selling accelerates. The same pat-
buyers for gold tern occurred when gold prices slumped
price cheer — David seven years ago.
Gray/Bloomberg
“As risk perception changes, private
consumers will come back into the gold
market while money managers are
likely to be bailing out,” she said.
Gold, a common inflation hedge,
could also rebound if price rises pick up
steam and central banks delay interest
rate rises: a fall in inflation-adjusted or
“real” interest rates has been a key
driver in this year’s rally.
Goldman Sachs says the risk of infla-
tion is “greater than at any other time
since the 1970s”, due to pledged green
spending plans in China, Europe and in
the US by Joe Biden, the president-elect.
The bank, which expects the Federal
Reserve to keep rates on hold until
2025, predicts gold will reach $2,300 an
ounce in the coming months.
Citi, meanwhile, predicts gold prices
will set fresh highs in 2021, as central
bank buying keeps yields on other
assets suppressed.
“Gold markets will probably be pulled
higher as reflation concerns grow with
the recovery and investors look to buy
the currency of last resort,” said Jeff Cur-
rie, head of commodities research at
Offsetting Goldman Sachs.
But others think any speed-up in
a fall in price rises will be outweighed by the
investment effect of the wider economic rebound.
Macquarie’s Mr Garvey said it was an
demand “oversimplification” to say gold trades
may require with inflation. “It trades on the inter-
play between inflation and interest
India and rates,” he added. “We’re not saying you
China to don’t get a rise in inflation expectations
— but we think you get a larger rise in
step up nominal yields.”
‘There are still some
glaring gaps that haven’t
been addressed by
either the UK or EU’
assessing whether the other qualifies for
access rights. That requires individual
decisions on nearly 40 market activi-
ties, including audit standards, capital
requirements and access to exchanges
and clearing houses. The discussion is
separate from the ongoing trade talks.
The UK this month announced it
would press ahead with some equiva-
lence determinations, allowing UK-
based banks to use EU financial bench-
marks, clearing houses and credit-
rating agencies, and exempting them
from a jump in capital necessary to
absorb losses linked to EU exposures.
Brussels, however, has not reciprocated.
EU diplomats say the union’s stance
reflects a mixture of negotiating tactics
connected to talks on the two sides’
future relationship, a political agenda to
become more independent from the
City in future, and concerns about hand-
ing rights to a country seeking to break
away from EU rules.
A lack of equivalence decisions would
not shut UK banks, investors and trad-
ing venues out of the EU market, but it
would open gaps in regulation as both
sides hammer out agreements on a
country-by-country basis.
“The uncertainty is not doing anyone
Our global any good,” said Mark Spanbroek, chair-
team gives you man of FIA Epta, an industry group rep-
market-moving resenting about 30 of Europe’s proprie-
news and views, tary traders. “If you don’t solve this you
24 hours a day are running into bilateral agreements,
ft.com/markets where some [national] regulators inter-
pret the rules differently to others”

Asset management Fixed income

Norway’s oil fund to use more external
managers in first sign of ‘tuned’ approach
Richard Milne — Oslo
Norway’s $1.2tn oil fund will signifi-
cantly increase its use of external asset
managers next year as the world’s big-
gest sovereign wealth fund seeks to
boost its returns.
Jon Nicolaisen, deputy governor of Nor-
way’s central bank with responsibility
for the oil fund, said yesterday that from
next year, the fund would be able to
invest 5 per cent of all its assets with
external managers, up from the current
limit of 5 per cent of its equity portfolio.
That would mean an increase of about
43 per cent, or $18bn, in the money the
fund could place with external manag-
ers, according to calculations by the
Financial Times.
Norway’s oil fund had about $43bn
placed with external managers such as
Templeton, Old Mutual and Schroders
at the end of 2019 — 3.9 per cent of the
fund’s capital — with a focus on emerg-
ing markets or small-cap stocks.
External managers have delivered
excess returns of NKr48bn ($5.3bn) to
the fund during the past two decades,
with three-quarters of that coming in
the past eight years, according to the
fund. Norway’s oil fund has been
through a tumultuous year after its
appointment of former hedge fund
manager Nicolai Tangen as its new chief
executive led to extraordinary political
wrangling and media scrutiny of his
investments which almost derailed his
taking over.
Mr Tangen finally took over in Sep-
tember after agreeing to transfer his
entire shareholding in $19bn London-
based hedge fund AKO Capital to a
charitable foundation set up to resolve
Jon Nicolaisen: deputy head of the
central bank responsible for oil fund
concerns over potential conflicts of
interest.
The new oil fund boss has told the FT
he wants to “fine-tune” its management
to deliver excess returns. In his first
interview in October, Mr Tangen said it
should “use risk in a more clever way”
by, for instance, excluding more compa-
nies from its portfolio on environmen-
tal, social and governance issues.
Mr Nicolaisen presented the increase
in use of external managers alongside
risk-based divestments as examples of
how the fund could boost its returns.
The fund gave 74 fund managers 83
different mandates last year with 66 in
emerging markets equities and 17 in
small-cap stocks in developed coun-
tries. The external managers include
some hedge funds, such as Algebris, as
well as emerging market specialists
such as Ashmore.
“These investments spread the fund’s
risk across more markets. External
asset managers also help the fund to
steer clear of problematic business
models and companies and sectors with
weak ownership structures. It would
have been difficult to achieve without
local knowledge,” said Mr Nicolaisen.
China draws bumper demand for first
negative-yielding sovereign bond issue
Hudson Lockett and Thomas Hale
Hong Kong
China has sold its first negative-yield-
ing sovereign bond, a euro-denomi-
nated deal that drew bumper demand
from European debt investors facing
record low returns across the region.
The offering, which drew about €18bn
worth of orders for €4bn of bonds, is the
latest sign that investors are rushing to
gain exposure to China as it recovers
from the pandemic more quickly than
Europe or the US.
The bond sale by China’s finance min-
istry gave large institutional investors
the opportunity to grab higher yields
than those available in Europe, where
central bank easing to cushion the eco-
nomic blow of the pandemic has pushed
interest rates to record lows.
The yield on the five-year, €750m
bond was priced 0.3 percentage points
above the benchmark mid-swap rate of
minus 0.45 per cent, offering investors
an effective interest rate of minus 0.15
per cent, according to a term sheet seen
by the Financial Times.
The rest of the euro-denominated
debt offering was composed of a 10-year
€2bn bond and a 15-year €1.25bn bond,
carrying yields of 0.318 per cent and
0.665 per cent, respectively.
By comparison, the yield on five-year
German Bunds, which are typically seen
as a safe haven, hovered around minus
0.74 per cent yesterday.
“This was a combination of the rarity
of issuance alongside a positive outlook
for China’s economy,” said Alan Roch,
‘When you [as China] issue
€4bn . . . you’re far from
having filled people’s shoes
in terms of demand’
head of bond syndicate in Asia at Stand-
ard Chartered, one of the banks on the
deal.
He added that “From a relative stand-
point, when you [as China] issue
€4bn . . . you’re far from having filled
people’s shoes in terms of demand.”
Sam Fischer, head of China onshore
debt capital markets at Deutsche Bank,
another bank on the deal, said the
strong demand “shows investors are still
underexposed to China and there defi-
nitely is a scarcity value perceived in
these bonds”.
About 72 per cent of investors were
from Europe, the Middle East and
Africa.
Bankers said the five and 10-year
offerings were largely snapped up by
central banks and sovereign investment
funds, while the 15-year tranche skewed
towards European asset managers,
insurers and pension funds.
China’s finance ministry had
expressed concerns over issuing a
negative-yielding bond last year when it
issued its first euro-denominated
bonds, according to bankers on the deal,
but it has since become more comforta-
ble with the concept.
“We did some education in the mean-
time,” said one banker who worked on
both deals. “Issuing at a negative yield
doesn’t mean you actually have to have
a back-office team that chases investors
[for payments], it just means they’re
going to pay you up front for the nega-
tive portion.”
The latest sovereign issuance from
China comes weeks after Beijing sold
$6bn in dollar debt directly to US buyers
for the first time.
Friday 20 November 2020 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 11

COMPANIES & MARKETS

The day in the markets Closer scrutiny

What you need to know
of hedge funds
3 Economically sensitive companies drag
is long overdue
European bourses lower
Lira rallies after central bank unveils big rate rise
3 Tech stocks outperform on Wall Street Against the dollar (lira per $)
3 Turkish lira leaps against the dollar
after biggest rate rise in two-plus years
7.4
Antonio Weiss
Fears about rising coronavirus cases and 7.6
new restrictions hit global stock markets
yesterday, with European bourses taking Markets Insight
the brunt of the selling. 7.8
The continent-wide Stoxx Europe 600

O
and the FTSE 100 in London both nce again hedge funds are ing by international central banks prob- groundwork laid in 2016 when the FSOC
declined 0.8 per cent, with the relatively 8.0 facing increased scrutiny ably put downward pressure on Treas- reviewed the use of leverage by hedge
high weighting of economically sensitive for their role in a crisis ury prices. Hedge fund trade associa- funds. Its initial analysis concluded that
groups such as energy producers and moment in financial mar- tions have pointed to these additional a relatively small number of hedge
banks dragging down the benchmarks. 8.2 kets. This time, regulators factors to downplay their members’ funds were engaged in very large trades
On Wall Street, the blue-chip S&P 500, need to take more action. role. However, the contribution of in highly liquid markets using enor-
which has gained almost 9 per cent this 8.4 The Financial Stability Board, which hedge funds cannot be ignored. mous amounts of leverage. In a preview
month on the back of optimism over gathers the world’s leading financial reg- Contemporaneous reporting, as well of the March volatility, the report noted
vaccine breakthroughs, slipped 0.2 per ulators and finance ministries, this as subsequent analysis by the Federal that forced selling by hedge funds could
cent at lunchtime in New York. 8.6 week released a comprehensive review Reserve and now the FSB, all show that significantly disrupt trading or funding
US tech groups that have fared well of the turmoil that gripped financial the unwinding of highly leveraged strat- in key markets.
during the crisis outperformed, sending Oct 2020 Nov markets in March. egies by hedge funds exacerbated mar- Addressing such risks will require an
the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite up
Source: Refinitiv
The report highlights the role played ket stress. Price volatility triggered mar- active FSOC and market regulators who
0.5 per cent. by non-bank market participants in fan- gin calls — demands from lenders that view financial stability as within their
US coronavirus deaths rose by the ning a fire that the US Federal Reserve the funds pledge additional cash to back core mandate. Additional data will also
most in more than six months this week. over further restrictions to come [have] biggest interest rate rise in more than ultimately put out with unprecedented their trades — and led to forced selling be critical. Current hedge fund report-
New York City has closed public schools masked what was nothing short of more two years. liquidity. Yet the American counterpart ing is inadequate, limiting regulators’
and Colorado is urging residents against tremendous vaccine news.” In the first rate-setting meeting chaired to the FSB, the Financial Stability Over- ability to assess market risks in an era of
travelling around next week’s Gold fell 0.7 per cent to $1,858 an by new central bank governor Naci Agbal, sight Council, has been notably silent. The unwinding of highly high-speed algorithmic trading in mas-
Thanksgiving holiday. ounce while the dollar strengthened, with the bank lifted its benchmark one-week Congress created the FSOC in 2010 to leveraged strategies by sive volume.
The developments overshadowed the index measuring the greenback repo rate by 4.75 percentage points to monitor and address threats to financial Regulators should also consider ways
positive news about potential vaccines. against peers up 0.2 per cent. 15 per cent. The currency was still up stability. In 2016, the FSOC examined hedge funds exacerbated to limit hedge fund borrowing, whether
Medical journal The Lancet reported Analysts expect the dollar, which is more than 2 per cent in the evening, many of the vulnerabilities identified in market stress in March from banks or in the derivatives mar-
yesterday that Oxford university and typically in high demand during times of hovering around TL7.54. the FSB report, but unfortunately, the kets. Policy considerations will be com-
AstraZeneca’s vaccine candidate had economic uncertainty, to weaken US Treasury bonds, which often find current administration failed to act and plex. However, areas to revisit
shown a strong immune response, based significantly when a vaccine becomes buyers when investors retreat from buried this work. Remedying this that contributed to a self-reinforcing could include “haircut” practices that
on phase 2 trial data. widely available. equities, rose in price, pushing the yield should be a priority of Joe Biden’s new spiral. limit how much can be borrowed
Markets are “all about vaccines and the The lira leapt almost 3 per cent against on the 10-year Treasury down 0.03 administration. Given these disruptions, the FSB pro- against specific assets, margin require-
virus at the moment”, said Jim Reid, the dollar to TL7.4950 yesterday after percentage points to 0.85 per cent. In March, we saw a preview of what poses a series of steps to analyse and, if ments in derivatives trading, the degree
strategist at Deutsche Bank. “Worries Turkey’s central bank announced its Naomi Rovnick the consequences might be. While necessary, address the risks posed by of central clearing in Treasury markets,
the US Treasury market ordinarily non-banks. Their objective is not just to and how large hedge funds exposures
serves as a safe haven for investors in increase resilience but also to reduce the are incorporated into existing bank and
Markets update turbulent times, this proposition risk of “any unintended consequences, clearing firm stress tests.
was put to the test. Traditional meas- including moral hazard, due to expecta- After the events of March, one should
ures of liquidity dramatically deterio- tions of central bank interventions”. expect hedge funds will take on even
rated and volatility reached a post- The FSB is a valuable international greater leverage as they test the Fed’s
US Eurozone Japan UK China Brazil financial crisis peak. co-ordinating body, but solutions will willingness to step in again. An engaged
Stocks S&P 500 Eurofirst 300 Nikkei 225 FTSE100 Shanghai Comp Bovespa Stress rippled through financial mar- require action by national authorities. and empowered FSOC must not let his-
Level 3562.94 1497.07 25634.34 6334.35 3363.09 106050.66 kets and was propagated by a variety of In the US, only the FSOC, which is tory repeat itself. Next time could be far
% change on day -0.14 -0.72 -0.36 -0.80 0.47 -0.06 non-bank entities. Money market chaired by the Treasury secretary and worse.
Currency $ index (DXY) $ per € Yen per $ $ per £ Rmb per $ Real per $ funds, which played such a central role includes the heads of all major banking
Level 92.589 1.184 103.895 1.322 6.585 5.312 in the 2008-09 crisis, once again faced and markets regulators, is capable The writer is a former counsellor to the US
% change on day 0.296 -0.337 0.217 -0.602 0.643 0.363 redemptions. Mutual funds and of prioritising this work and facilitating Treasury secretary. Jonah Crane, a former
Govt. bonds 10-year Treasury 10-year Bund 10-year JGB 10-year Gilt 10-year bond 10-year bond exchange traded funds contributed to the necessary co-ordination. deputy assistant secretary for the FSOC at
Yield 0.854 -0.572 0.009 0.322 3.326 7.515 selling in corporate bond markets. Sell- It should do so by drawing on the the US Treasury, contributed to this article
Basis point change on day -1.560 -1.800 -0.720 -1.400 1.600 17.600
World index, Commods FTSE All-World Oil - Brent Oil - WTI Gold Silver Metals (LMEX)
Level 401.00 43.97 41.65 1876.10 24.32 3229.20
% change on day -0.28 -0.52 -0.45 -0.69 -1.28 0.54
Yesterday's close apart from: Currencies = 16:00 GMT; S&P, Bovespa, All World, Oil = 17:00 GMT; Gold, Silver = London pm fix. Bond data supplied by Tullett Prebon.

Main equity markets

S&P 500 index Eurofirst 300 index FTSE 100 index
3680 1520 6720

6400
3520 1440
6080
3360 1360 5760

| | | | | | | | |
3200 || | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | || | 1280 | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | || | 5440 | | | | | | | | | | |

Sep 2020 Nov Sep 2020 Nov Sep 2020 Nov

Biggest movers
% US Eurozone UK
L Brands 15.03 Edf 2.45 Croda Int 3.62
Coty 12.36 Reed Elsevier 2.21 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust 3.37
Ups

Fiserv 4.23 Iliad 2.15 Halma 3.11

Simon Property 3.97 Norsk Hydro 2.08 Morrison (wm) Supermarkets 2.90
Target 3.68 Endesa 1.90 Relx 2.51
%
Robert Half Int -5.87 Seadrill -9.77 Johnson Matthey -5.57
Estee Lauder Companies (the) -3.90 B. Sabadell -4.70 Melrose Industries -4.67
Downs

Franklin Resources -3.61 Commerzbank -4.68 B&m Eur Value Retail S.a. -4.21
Centene -3.58 Lufthansa -4.17 Rolls-royce Holdings -3.94
Flowserve -3.49 Mapfre -3.89 Hargreaves Lansdown -3.77
Prices taken at 17:00 GMT Based on the constituents of the FTSE Eurofirst 300 Eurozone
All data provided by Morningstar unless otherwise noted.

Wall Street Eurozone London

L Brands leapt after the group behind Thyssenkrupp sank after the steel and Shares in Royal Mail climbed after it
Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works materials group posted a full-year loss of reported revenue from parcels exceeded
posted strong quarterly results. €5.5bn and said it would cut 5,000 jobs. that for letters for the first time in the
Earnings per share were $1.17 for the Weaker earnings guidance and higher postal group’s history.
third quarter ending October 31, capital expenditures expectations were The company said parcels now
compared with a loss per share driving assumptions of further cash burn accounted for 60 per cent of total
of $0.91 for the same period last year. into next year, said analysts at Citi. revenue, compared with 47 per cent in
“The market may conclude a Victoria’s The announcement of a rights issue the previous half-year as pandemic
Secret comeback is under way,” said UBS, sent Kion lower. The German materials accelerated a shift to online shopping.
adding that there were several reasons manufacturer said it would issue 13.1m Royal Mail earlier this year announced
that could explain the lingerie brand’s shares. The equity would be offered to it would cut 2,000 posts.
better than expected performance. They existing shareholders at a ratio of 1:9, Kingfisher sank despite reporting a
included a reduction in promotions and a meaning for every nine shares, one new 17.4 per cent rise in like-for-like sales in
better response from shoppers to the share could be bought at a price that the third quarter, taking the DIY chain’s
product choice of the new management. would be set at the end of the month. sales to £3.5bn. But like-for-like sales in
“The biggest question is if the Norwegian renewable energy group the fourth quarter showed signs of
consumer is truly re-engaging with the Nel rallied after announcing it had an slowing, rising 12.6 per cent as of
brand or if the rate of decline has simply agreement with Spanish utility Iberdrola November 14. “While the strength of our
slowed for a brief period.” to collaborate on a green hydrogen Q3 performance was reassuring,
Macy’s, the department store chain, production plant in Spain. uncertainty over Covid-19 and the impact
slipped in morning trade after net sales Positive third-quarter earnings results of temporary lockdown restrictions in
for the third quarter fell 23 per cent — lifted Knorr-Bremse. The manufacturer of most of our markets continue to limit our
from $5.2bn in 2019 to $3.9bn this year. braking systems posted a 3.6 per cent rise near-term visibility,” warned the group.
“Looking to Holiday 2020, we know this in order intake year on year due to a Naked Wines rose after investment
year is different,” said chairman Jeff strong rise in demand for commercial bank Liberum reiterated its “buy” rating
Gennette. The retailer continued “to vehicles. for the online retailer and raised its price
watch the resurgence of Covid-19 and its A warning from the IMF soured target to 575p from 495p, citing the
potential impact on our business”. sentiment in German lenders, helping to company’s strong sales growth during the
Notice to Advertisers
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group Sinclair Broadcast. It said it discretionary dividend distributions and climb. The defence group won a $76.3m Acceptance of any advertisement for publication will be subject to the then current terms and conditions of insertion of advertisements in FT publications.
combined Bally’s sports betting share buybacks until the full impact of contract from the US Navy to maintain A copy of the terms and conditions of insertion of advertisements in FT publications can be obtained from
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sports networks. Ray Douglas Ray Douglas destroyer USS Stout. Ray Douglas
12 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Friday 20 November 2020

MARKET DATA

WORLD MARKETS AT A GLANCE FT.COM/MARKETSDATA

Change during previous day’s trading (%)
S&P 500 Nasdaq Composite Dow Jones Ind FTSE 100 FTSE Eurofirst 300 Nikkei Hang Seng FTSE All World $ $ per € $ per £ ¥ per $ £ per € Oil Brent $ Sep Gold $

-0.14% -0.39% -0.80% -0.72% -0.36% -0.71% -0.28% -0.337% -0.602% -0.19% -0.69%
0.49% 0.217% 0.224%
Stock Market movements over last 30 days, with the FTSE All-World in the same currency as a comparison
AMERICAS EUROPE ASIA
Oct 20 - - Index All World Oct 20 - Nov 19 Index All World Oct 20 - Nov 19 Index All World Oct 20 - Nov 19 Index All World Oct 20 - Nov 19 Index All World Oct 20 - Nov 19 Index All World

S&P 500 New York S&P/TSX COMP Toronto FTSE 100 London Xetra Dax Frankfurt Nikkei 225 Tokyo Kospi Seoul
2,547.42
3,562.94 16,850.12 6,334.35 13,086.16 25,634.34
3,435.56 16,230.23 12,557.64 2,370.86
5,776.50 23,567.04

Day -0.14% Month 3.96% Year 14.18% Day -0.24% Month 3.52% Year -0.97% Day -0.80% Month 7.63% Year -13.52% Day -0.88% Month 0.25% Year NaN% Day -0.36% Month 9.50% Year 9.47% Day 0.07% Month 8.79% Year 17.90%

Nasdaq Composite New York IPC Mexico City FTSE Eurofirst 300 Europe Ibex 35 Madrid Hang Seng Hong Kong FTSE Straits Times Singapore
1,497.07 7,930.20 26,356.97 2,777.00
41,770.10
11,858.85
11,484.69 1,395.38 24,754.42 2,525.61
37,685.74 6,811.50
Day 0.49% Month 3.30% Year 38.35% Day -1.14% Month 10.92% Year -4.21% Day -0.72% Month 5.65% Year -5.66% Day -0.64% Month 15.60% Year -14.35% Day -0.71% Month 8.26% Year -1.04% Day -0.42% Month 9.65% Year -14.77%

Dow Jones Industrial New York Bovespa São Paulo CAC 40 Paris FTSE MIB Milan Shanghai Composite Shanghai BSE Sensex Mumbai
106,050.66 21,536.24
29,322.70 5,474.66 43,599.96
28,210.82 100,539.83 19,085.95 3,325.02 3,363.09
4,853.95 40,707.31

Day -0.39% Month 3.96% Year 4.93% Day -0.06% Month 7.38% Year 0.07% Day -0.67% Month 11.06% Year -7.35% Day -0.40% Month 11.15% Year -7.69% Day 0.47% Month 0.80% Year 15.60% Day -1.31% Month 9.05% Year 8.23%

Country Index Latest Previous Country Index Latest Previous Country Index Latest Previous Country Index Latest Previous Country Index Latest Previous Country Index Latest Previous
Argentina Merval 51475.81 51295.53 Cyprus
CSE M&P Gen 68.46 68.68 Italy FTSE Italia All-Share 23408.17 23495.79 Philippines Manila Comp 6997.62 7051.78 Taiwan Weighted Pr 13722.43 13773.29 Cross-Border DJ Global Titans ($) 411.90 412.24
Australia All Ordinaries 6742.70 6726.50 Czech Republic
PX 938.51 945.27 FTSE Italia Mid Cap 36198.22 36385.76 Poland Wig 51651.40 52232.17 Thailand Bangkok SET 1369.42 1364.59 Euro Stoxx 50 (Eur) 3451.97 3482.17
S&P/ASX 200 6547.20 6531.10 OMXC Copenahgen 20
Denmark 1388.14 1383.41 FTSE MIB 21536.24 21622.66 Portugal PSI 20 4367.51 4417.72 Turkey BIST 100 1313.02 1294.72 Euronext 100 ID 1077.55 1085.12
S&P/ASX 200 Res 4608.50 4623.80 Egypt
EGX 30 10898.67 10989.72 Japan 2nd Section 6388.48 6367.45 PSI General 3311.27 3325.84 UAE Abu Dhabi General Index 4913.71 4952.36 FTSE 4Good Global ($) 8769.05 8791.81
Austria ATX 2502.97 2511.29 Estonia
OMX Tallinn 1211.80 1206.64 Nikkei 225 25634.34 25728.14 Romania BET Index 8986.26 8936.25 UK FT 30 2476.40 2461.30 FTSE All World ($) 401.00 402.11
Belgium BEL 20 3572.69 3614.96 Finland
OMX Helsinki General 10485.52 10562.15 S&P Topix 150 1452.56 1447.47 Russia Micex Index 3046.49 3080.68 FTSE 100 6334.35 6385.24 FTSE E300 1497.07 1507.91
BEL Mid 8012.25 8010.94 France
CAC 40 5474.66 5511.45 Topix 1726.41 1720.65 RTX 1258.91 1276.75 FTSE 4Good UK 5954.51 5997.62 FTSE Eurotop 100 2817.21 2842.20
Brazil IBovespa 106050.66 106119.09 SBF 120 4330.67 4360.35 Jordan Amman SE 1555.49 1558.25 Saudi-Arabia TADAWUL All Share Index 8578.42 8621.19 FTSE All Share 3578.38 3607.61 FTSE Global 100 ($) 2320.90 2323.57
Canada S&P/TSX 60 1007.26 Germany
1009.38 M-DAX 28745.50 28799.05 Kenya NSE 20 1788.54 1787.45 Singapore FTSE Straits Times 2777.00 2788.59 FTSE techMARK 100 5966.75 5988.65 FTSE Gold Min ($) 2399.08 2467.81
S&P/TSX Comp 16850.12 16889.82 TecDAX 3033.31 3016.94 Kuwait KSX Market Index 6633.44 6603.51 Slovakia SAX 338.72 354.11 USA DJ Composite 9807.79 9873.75 FTSE Latibex Top (Eur) 4440.00 4432.20
S&P/TSX Div Met & Min 580.52 573.43 XETRA Dax 13086.16 13201.89 Latvia OMX Riga 1117.83 1110.06 Slovenia SBI TOP - - DJ Industrial 29322.70 29438.42 FTSE Multinationals ($) 2532.79 2548.12
Chile S&P/CLX IGPA Gen 20262.52 Greece
20494.35 Athens Gen 699.20 708.16 Lithuania OMX Vilnius 773.24 775.50 South Africa FTSE/JSE All Share 56753.49 57323.67 DJ Transport 12241.67 12348.31 FTSE World ($) 711.36 713.21
China FTSE A200 13043.91 12946.07 FTSE/ASE 20 1656.60 1678.89 Luxembourg LuxX 1227.67 1244.07 FTSE/JSE Res 20 51450.56 51858.33 DJ Utilities 869.05 881.37 FTSEurofirst 100 (Eur) 3823.70 3859.44
FTSE B35 9000.71 Hong Kong
8988.96 Hang Seng 26356.97 26544.29 Malaysia FTSE Bursa KLCI 1583.68 1604.75 FTSE/JSE Top 40 51977.91 52518.35 Nasdaq 100 11945.05 11894.71 FTSEurofirst 80 (Eur) 4724.60 4761.83
Shanghai A 3524.79 3508.24 HS China Enterprise 10555.36 10640.05 Mexico IPC 41770.10 42252.61 South Korea Kospi 2547.42 2545.64 Nasdaq Cmp 11858.85 11801.60 MSCI ACWI Fr ($) 610.11 612.86
Shanghai B 252.08 251.30 HSCC Red Chip 3890.16 3897.22 Morocco MASI 10722.04 10708.54 Kospi 200 340.16 339.96 NYSE Comp 13778.35 13949.10 MSCI All World ($) 2543.36 2558.43
Shanghai Comp 3363.09 3347.30
Hungary Bux 38163.61 38361.82 Netherlands AEX 596.01 600.88 Spain IBEX 35 7930.20 7981.50 S&P 500 3562.94 3567.79 MSCI Europe (Eur) 1582.26 1577.43
Shenzhen A 2381.88 2366.91
India BSE Sensex 43599.96 44180.05 AEX All Share 861.79 869.23 Sri Lanka CSE All Share 6060.89 6108.22 Wilshire 5000 37029.68 37004.92 MSCI Pacific ($) 2938.43 2938.48
Shenzhen B 974.80 982.01 Nifty 500 10477.50 10588.35 New Zealand NZX 50 12557.13 12605.96 Sweden OMX Stockholm 30 1915.40 1922.53 Venezuela IBC 628845.38 622095.06 S&P Euro (Eur) 1597.39 1609.23
Colombia COLCAP 1234.56 1230.73
Indonesia Jakarta Comp 5594.06 5557.52 Nigeria SE All Share 34818.01 34242.83 OMX Stockholm AS 754.09 756.47 Vietnam VNI 983.26 973.53 S&P Europe 350 (Eur) 1542.81 1555.14
Croatia CROBEX 2013.05 Ireland
2011.29 ISEQ Overall 7087.95 7187.51 Norway Oslo All Share 973.39 983.54 Switzerland SMI Index 10490.77 10563.89 S&P Global 1200 ($) 2808.49 2816.56
Israel Tel Aviv 125 1486.12 1473.15 Pakistan KSE 100 40540.70 40514.67 Stoxx 50 (Eur) 3053.68 3079.53
(c) Closed. (u) Unavaliable. † Correction. ♥ Subject to official recalculation. For more index coverage please see www.ft.com/worldindices. A fuller version of this table is available on the ft.com research data archive.

STOCK MARKET: BIGGEST MOVERS UK MARKET WINNERS AND LOSERS

AMERICA LONDON EURO MARKETS TOKYO Nov 19 %Chg %Chg Nov 19 %Chg %Chg Nov 19 %Chg %Chg Nov 19 %Chg %Chg
ACTIVE STOCKS stock close Day's ACTIVE STOCKS stock close Day's ACTIVE STOCKS stock close Day's ACTIVE STOCKS stock close Day's FTSE 100 price(p) week ytd FTSE 250 price(p) week ytd FTSE SmallCap price(p) week ytd Industry Sectors price(p) week ytd
traded m's price change traded m's price change traded m's price change traded m's price change Winners Winners Winners Winners
Amazon.com 49.7 3114.25 8.79 Astrazeneca 206.4 8125.00 -55.00 Asml Holding 334.7 355.45 -2.20 Ntt Docomo,. 2281.5 3866.00 -26.00 Taylor Wimpey 167.50 15.2 -15.0 Micro Focus Int 349.70 43.3 -68.5 Saga 280.20 52.7 -62.0 Aerospace & Defense 3563.17 7.2 -
Boeing 45.4 204.44 1.14 Diageo 128.9 2979.50 2.50 Inditex 311.5 26.97 -0.36 Softbank . 838.2 6577.00 -62.00 Whitbread 3057.00 13.9 -27.3 Just 57.15 21.6 -31.1 Galliford Try Holdings 108.30 31.8 -87.8 Automobiles & Parts 3512.71 5.6 -
Nvidia 42.6 532.70 -4.45 Bp 128.4 243.75 -8.20 Sap Se O.n. 277.0 99.42 -0.58 Fast Retailing Co., 625.2 83250.00 -1950.00 Imperial Brands 1505.00 11.6 -19.8 Capita 43.54 20.4 -74.1 Metro Bank 107.50 30.1 -48.6 Food & Drug Retailers 4376.96 4.4 4.1
Apple 40.7 118.14 0.11 Royal Dutch Shell 114.4 1182.20 -21.80 Allianz Se Na O.n. 276.3 194.84 -3.96 Sony 514.3 9249.00 12.00 Legal & General 258.00 11.4 -17.0 Network Int Holdings 278.60 18.3 -56.1 Senior 72.10 28.1 -61.2 Banks 2468.66 4.4 -
Microsoft 22.2 211.32 0.24 Hsbc Holdings 111.4 383.85 -0.95 Total 269.0 34.11 -0.66 Toyota Motor 476.6 7301.00 -18.00 Intermediate Capital 1720.00 10.7 4.9 Trainline 464.00 16.0 -7.9 Rps 71.80 23.8 -58.7 Life Insurance 6939.30 4.3 -
Advanced Micro Devices 18.2 84.98 2.44 Glaxosmithkline 108.4 1395.00 20.20 Lvmh 243.9 488.65 2.50 Mitsubishi Ufj Fin,. 361.8 461.10 -7.10 M&g 193.00 10.3 -20.8 Cmc Markets 392.00 16.0 165.6 Headlam 373.00 21.9 -30.9 Fixed Line Telecommunication 1560.93 3.9 -
Facebook 16.1 271.67 -0.30 Unilever 108.2 4463.00 -59.00 Intesa Sanpaolo 242.2 1.85 -0.02 Softbank 324.4 1289.50 33.00 Sainsbury (j) 222.00 9.7 -4.4 Rank 145.60 15.6 -48.0 Just 57.15 21.6 -31.1 Industrial Transportation 2247.49 3.8 -7.9
Alphabet 10.9 1755.59 8.81 British American Tobacco 101.6 2780.00 -95.00 Unilever 239.0 49.55 -0.77 Nippon Telegraph And Telephone 305.2 2486.50 29.00 Rolls-royce Holdings 98.56 9.5 -57.8 Babcock Int 311.70 15.4 -50.6 Gem Diamonds 44.00 21.5 -15.5 Oil & Gas Producers 4277.79 3.6 -
Pfizer 8.3 35.96 -0.36 Rsa Insurance 93.3 676.20 -0.60 Daimler Ag Na O.n. 227.8 55.07 -0.63 Tokyo Electron 295.4 31800.00 -570.00 Natwest 156.40 8.8 -36.0 Puretech Health 294.50 12.8 -7.1 Vp 780.00 21.3 -17.0 Software & Computer Services 1947.14 3.4 -
Paypal Holdings 7.4 190.19 0.07 Rio Tinto 87.4 4716.00 -81.50 Royal Dutch Shella 215.1 13.82 -0.44 M3,. 232.1 8139.00 176.00 Melrose Industries 158.15 8.5 -34.7 Aggreko 583.50 12.4 -31.3 Int Personal Finance 90.10 21.1 -44.2 Nonlife Insurance 3306.88 3.2 1.7
Bae Systems 507.80 7.8 -11.5 Paragon Banking 426.80 11.8 -22.9 Schroder Eur Real Estate Investment Trust 97.00 20.6 -11.4 Mobile Telecommunications 2790.79 2.5 -
BIGGEST MOVERS Close Day's Day's BIGGEST MOVERS Close Day's Day's BIGGEST MOVERS Close Day's Day's BIGGEST MOVERS Close Day's Day's
Morrison (wm) Supermarkets 186.20 7.6 -8.0 Tbc Bank 1260.00 11.5 -2.9 Mitie 38.65 20.4 -48.2 General Industrials 6249.07 1.8 -2.3
price change chng% price change chng% price change chng% price change chng%
Ups Ups Ups Ups Losers Losers Losers Losers
L Brands 38.66 5.05 15.03 Vectura 116.80 14.20 13.84 Edf 11.91 0.29 2.45 Z Holdings 613.10 34.80 6.02 Experian 2933.00 -7.5 15.0 Premier Foods 86.60 -8.8 127.6 Premier Foods 86.60 -8.8 127.6 Personal Goods 37431.13 -5.9 -1.7
Coty 5.96 0.66 12.36 Capita 43.54 2.84 6.98 Relx 22.22 0.48 2.21 Cyberagent,. 6440.00 350.00 5.75 Flutter Entertainment 12735.00 -7.1 37.0 4imprint 2390.00 -8.8 -30.1 4imprint 2390.00 -8.8 -30.1 Pharmaceuticals & Biotech. 16939.40 -5.0 -5.0
Fiserv 112.54 4.57 4.23 Croda Int 6248.00 218.00 3.62 Iliad 173.70 3.65 2.15 Gs Yuasa 2348.00 111.00 4.96 Hargreaves Lansdown 1468.50 -7.0 -25.2 Oxford Instruments 1894.00 -7.6 22.5 Devro 158.80 -7.9 -8.6 Health Care Equip.& Services 6376.69 -3.8 -
Simon Property 79.65 3.04 3.97 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust 1044.00 34.00 3.37 Norsk Hydro 3.21 0.07 2.08 Yamato Holdings Co., 2637.00 116.00 4.60 Unilever 4463.00 -7.0 2.7 Polypipe 491.00 -7.5 -10.0 Oxford Instruments 1894.00 -7.6 22.5 Electronic & Electrical Equip. 9652.52 -3.2 11.5
Target 172.99 6.14 3.68 Royal Mail 295.50 9.50 3.32 Endesa 24.69 0.46 1.90 Odakyu Electric Railway Co., 3170.00 120.00 3.93 Rentokil Initial 515.60 -6.6 13.2 Syncona 260.00 -6.5 17.1 Amigo Holdings 9.25 -7.5 -86.9 Food Producers 6528.13 -3.0 -
Astrazeneca 8125.00 -6.2 6.1 Mediclinic Int 306.40 -6.3 -25.4 Luceco 236.00 -6.7 80.2 Support Services 9717.98 -2.4 2.8
Downs Downs Downs Downs
Dcc 5514.00 -5.7 -16.6 Genus 4172.00 -6.3 29.4 Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon 248.50 -5.9 36.7 Gas Water & Multiutilities 5066.52 -2.2 -6.2
Robert Half Int 61.53 -3.84 -5.87 Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings 69.70 -9.80 -12.33 Seadrill 0.21 -0.02 -9.77 Fujikura 396.00 -20.00 -4.81
London Stock Exchange 8092.00 -5.6 5.1 Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon 248.50 -5.9 36.7 Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust 105.00 -5.8 -3.5 Construction & Materials 6658.21 -1.0 -5.9
Estee Lauder Companies (the) 240.55 -9.77 -3.90 Cineworld 44.20 -4.20 -8.68 B. Sabadell 0.42 -0.02 -4.70 Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal 1183.00 -53.50 -4.33
Smith & Nephew 1449.50 -5.0 -20.9 Ao World 396.50 -5.7 362.1 Xaar 146.00 -5.8 178.6 Real Estate Investment Trusts 2724.26 -0.9 -
Franklin Resources 20.55 -0.77 -3.61 Investec 188.95 -15.35 -7.51 Commerzbank Ag 4.93 -0.24 -4.68 Alps Alpine Co., 1355.00 -60.00 -4.24
Reckitt Benckiser 6728.00 -5.0 8.5 Dunelm 1186.00 -5.6 2.3 Ao World 396.50 -5.7 362.1 Industrial Engineering 14078.93 -0.8 4.8
Centene 63.60 -2.36 -3.58 Ssp 303.20 -24.20 -7.39 Lufthansa Ag Vna O.n. 9.48 -0.41 -4.17 Mitsui Eng & Shipbuilding Co., 366.00 -15.00 -3.94
Halma 2423.00 -4.3 12.5 Vivo Energy 88.70 -5.4 -29.0 Pendragon 13.00 -5.2 1.4 General Retailers 2479.56 -0.7 -1.0
Flowserve 33.47 -1.21 -3.49 Vivo Energy 88.70 -5.80 -6.14 Mapfre 1.58 -0.06 -3.89 Credit Saison Co., 1178.00 -48.00 -3.92
Just Eat Takeaway.com N.v. 8052.00 -4.2 - Tate & Lyle 645.60 -5.0 -16.0 Schroder Uk Public Private Trust 26.70 -5.0 -27.6 Electricity 8016.38 -0.6 -4.6
Based on the constituents of the S&P500 Based on the constituents of the FTSE 350 index Based on the constituents of the FTSEurofirst 300 Eurozone index Based on the constituents of the Nikkei 225 index
Based on last week's performance. †Price at suspension.

CURRENCIES
DOLLAR EURO POUND DOLLAR EURO POUND DOLLAR EURO POUND DOLLAR EURO POUND
Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's Closing Day's
Nov 19 Currency Mid Change Mid Change Mid Change Nov 19 Currency Mid Change Mid Change Mid Change Nov 19 Currency Mid Change Mid Change Mid Change Nov 19 Currency Mid Change Mid Change Mid Change
Argentina Argentine Peso 80.2806 0.1198 95.0527 -0.1467 106.1547 -0.4831 Indonesia Indonesian Rupiah 14162.5000 92.5000 16768.5074 58.8691 18727.0477 9.7094 Poland Polish Zloty 3.7771 0.0168 4.4721 0.0064 4.9944 -0.0079 ..Three Month 0.7564 0.0045 0.8953 0.0027 - -
Australia Australian Dollar 1.3754 0.0103 1.6285 0.0073 1.8187 0.0027 Israel Israeli Shekel 3.3493 0.0009 3.9655 -0.0110 4.4287 -0.0257 Romania Romanian Leu 4.1157 0.0118 4.8730 -0.0008 5.4422 -0.0172 ..One Year 0.7565 0.0045 0.8948 0.0027 - -
Bahrain Bahrainin Dinar 0.3771 -0.0001 0.4464 -0.0014 0.4986 -0.0031 Japan Japanese Yen 103.8950 0.2250 123.0123 -0.1068 137.3800 -0.5322 Russia Russian Ruble 76.3369 0.4119 90.3834 0.2144 100.9400 -0.0630 United States United States Dollar - - 1.1840 -0.0036 1.3223 -0.0080
Bolivia Bolivian Boliviano 6.9100 - 8.1815 -0.0249 9.1371 -0.0553 ..One Month 103.8950 0.2249 123.0124 -0.1067 137.3800 -0.5323 Saudi Arabia Saudi Riyal 3.7504 - 4.4405 -0.0135 4.9591 -0.0300 ..One Month - - 1.1839 -0.1463 1.3223 -0.0080
Brazil Brazilian Real 5.3122 0.0192 6.2896 0.0037 7.0242 -0.0170 ..Three Month 103.8949 0.2247 123.0125 -0.1066 137.3799 -0.5324 Singapore Singapore Dollar 1.3455 0.0050 1.5931 0.0011 1.7792 -0.0041 ..Three Month - - 1.1837 -0.1463 1.3224 -0.0080
Canada Canadian Dollar 1.3087 0.0021 1.5495 -0.0022 1.7305 -0.0077 ..One Year 103.8945 0.2239 123.0128 -0.1060 137.3800 -0.5327 South Africa South African Rand 15.5019 0.0819 18.3543 0.0414 20.4981 -0.0152 ..One Year - - 1.1830 -0.1463 1.3226 -0.0080
Chile Chilean Peso 758.7850 1.3100 898.4064 -1.1756 1003.3388 -4.3305 Kenya Kenyan Shilling 109.4000 - 129.5303 -0.3938 144.6592 -0.8756 South Korea South Korean Won 1115.6500 11.7000 1320.9370 9.8790 1475.2202 6.6351 Venezuela Venezuelan Bolivar Fuerte - - - - - -
China Chinese Yuan 6.5851 0.0421 7.7968 0.0263 8.7075 0.0033 Kuwait Kuwaiti Dinar 0.3058 - 0.3621 -0.0011 0.4044 -0.0024 Sweden Swedish Krona 8.6369 0.0534 10.2261 0.0323 11.4205 0.0018 Vietnam Vietnamese Dong 23177.5000 7.0000 27442.3710 -75.0613 30647.5834 -176.1817
Colombia Colombian Peso 3645.8500 -3.1000 4316.7101 -16.8059 4820.8965 -33.3028 Malaysia Malaysian Ringgit 4.0985 0.0115 4.8527 -0.0011 5.4194 -0.0175 Switzerland Swiss Franc 0.9121 0.0027 1.0799 -0.0001 1.2061 -0.0037 European Union Euro 0.8446 0.0026 - - 1.1168 -0.0034
Costa Rica Costa Rican Colon 606.5900 -0.7750 718.2065 -3.1039 802.0919 -5.8859 Mexico Mexican Peso 20.1875 -0.0260 23.9021 -0.1035 26.6939 -0.1962 Taiwan New Taiwan Dollar 28.5055 0.0050 33.7507 -0.0967 37.6927 -0.2215 ..One Month 0.8445 0.0026 - - 1.1168 -0.0034
Czech Republic Czech Koruna 22.2551 0.0616 26.3502 -0.0070 29.4278 -0.0962 New Zealand New Zealand Dollar 1.4495 0.0069 1.7162 0.0030 1.9167 -0.0024 Thailand Thai Baht 30.4025 0.0925 35.9968 0.0004 40.2011 -0.1203 ..Three Month 0.8443 0.0026 - - 1.1167 -0.0034
Denmark Danish Krone 6.2941 0.0200 7.4523 0.0012 8.3227 -0.0237 Nigeria Nigerian Naira 383.5000 -2.0000 454.0665 -3.7557 507.1008 -5.7300 Tunisia Tunisian Dinar 2.7484 0.0083 3.2541 0.0000 3.6341 -0.0110 ..One Year 0.8436 0.0026 - - 1.1162 -0.0034
Egypt Egyptian Pound 15.6359 0.0450 18.5131 -0.0028 20.6753 -0.0652 Norway Norwegian Krone 9.0374 0.0343 10.7003 0.0083 11.9501 -0.0266 Turkey Turkish Lira 7.5493 -0.1357 8.9384 -0.1884 9.9823 -0.2410
Hong Kong Hong Kong Dollar 7.7540 0.0014 9.1807 -0.0262 10.2530 -0.0602 Pakistan Pakistani Rupee 160.4500 0.8000 189.9738 0.3725 212.1625 -0.2199 United Arab Emirates UAE Dirham 3.6732 - 4.3490 -0.0132 4.8570 -0.0294
Hungary Hungarian Forint 303.5051 -0.2167 359.3520 -1.3499 401.3238 -2.7174 Peru Peruvian Nuevo Sol 3.5683 -0.0083 4.2248 -0.0226 4.7183 -0.0395 United Kingdom Pound Sterling 0.7563 0.0045 0.8954 0.0027 - -
India Indian Rupee 74.2700 0.0850 87.9362 -0.1664 98.2070 -0.4814 Philippines Philippine Peso 48.3050 0.0700 57.1934 -0.0908 63.8735 -0.2935 ..One Month 0.7563 0.0045 0.8954 0.0027 - -
Rates are derived from WM Reuters Spot Rates and MorningStar (latest rates at time of production). Some values are rounded. Currency redenominated by 1000. The exchange rates printed in this table are also available at www.FT.com/marketsdata
UK SERIES
FTSE ACTUARIES SHARE INDICES www.ft.com/equities FT 30 INDEX FTSE SECTORS: LEADERS & LAGGARDS FTSE 100 SUMMARY
Produced in conjunction with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries Nov 18 Nov 17 Nov 16 Nov 13 Nov 12 Yr Ago High Low Year to date percentage changes Closing Day's Closing Day's
£ Strlg Day's Euro £ Strlg £ Strlg Year Div P/E X/D Total FT 30 2476.40 2461.30 2476.00 2407.50 2401.90 0.00 3314.70 1337.80 Leisure Goods 49.93 FTSE SmallCap Index -4.15 Real Est Invest & Se -15.61 FTSE 100 Price Change FTSE 100 Price Change
Nov 19 chge% Index Nov 18 Nov 17 ago yield% Cover ratio adj Return FT 30 Div Yield - - - - - 0.00 3.93 2.74 Tech Hardware & Eq 16.58 Forestry & Paper -4.17 FTSE 100 Index -16.26 3I Group PLC 1106 1.50 Kingfisher PLC 291.30 -8.00
FTSE 100 (101) 6385.24 0.31 5574.45 6365.33 6421.29 7307.70 3.86 1.56 16.66 190.91 6086.28 P/E Ratio net - - - - - 0.00 19.44 14.26 Electronic & Elec Eq 11.91 Industrials -4.34 Tobacco -16.34 Admiral Group PLC 2939 46.00 Land Securities Group PLC 683.50 -22.40
FTSE 250 (251) 19699.87 0.94 17198.43 19516.17 19608.05 20440.50 2.81 1.15 30.93 299.99 15600.10 FT 30 since compilation: 4198.4 high: 19/07/1999; low49.4 18/02/1900Base Date: 1/7/35 Equity Invest Instr 6.83 Gas Water & Multi -4.53 Life Insurance -16.71 Anglo American PLC 2120 -51.50 Legal & General Group PLC 258.00 -0.70
FTSE 250 ex Inv Co (181) 20239.64 0.92 17669.66 20055.99 20069.01 21638.03 2.95 1.34 25.32 265.19 16349.41 FT 30 hourly changes Industrial Eng 3.25 Utilities -4.58 Food Producers -16.97 Antofagasta PLC 1097 -23.50 Lloyds Banking Group PLC 35.66 -0.01
FTSE 350 (352) 3636.91 0.43 3175.10 3621.46 3650.63 4091.26 3.67 1.50 18.18 99.04 6909.00 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 High Low Personal Goods 3.20 Electricity -4.73 Mobile Telecomms -17.80 Ashtead Group PLC 3133 -1.00 London Stock Exchange Group PLC 8092 -2.00
FTSE 350 ex Investment Trusts (281) 3548.95 0.40 3098.31 3534.85 3561.62 4041.22 3.75 1.43 18.58 98.25 3479.15 2461.3 2450.4 2450.9 2164.9 2399.1 2395.8 2394.3 2414 2426.7 2439.2 2366.1 Support Services 2.50 Construct & Material -5.32 Financials -18.08 Associated British Foods PLC 1999.5 -33.50 M&G PLC 193.00 -0.55
FTSE 350 Higher Yield (147) 2820.32 0.89 2462.20 2795.35 2807.34 3541.16 5.41 1.37 13.46 108.83 5880.59 FT30 constituents and recent additions/deletions can be found at www.ft.com/ft30 Chemicals 1.22 Consumer Goods -7.33 Real Est Invest & Tr -19.26 Astrazeneca PLC 8125 -55.00 Melrose Industries PLC 158.15 -7.75
FTSE 350 Lower Yield (205) 4260.37 -0.04 3719.39 4261.98 4312.26 4314.31 1.91 1.86 28.08 72.16 5037.76 Pharmace & Biotech -0.10 Beverages -10.07 Health Care Eq & Srv -21.64 Auto Trader Group PLC 557.80 1.60 Mondi PLC 1685 -27.50
FTSE SmallCap (260) 5836.72 1.01 5095.58 5778.50 5776.29 5541.23 3.60 -1.27 -21.88 117.43 9256.67 Food & Drug Retailer -0.29 Financial Services -11.65 Telecommunications -22.91
FTSE SmallCap ex Inv Co (142) 4615.06 0.57 4029.05 4588.71 4508.33 4476.55 3.91 -0.82 -31.19 64.59 7651.97 FX: EFFECTIVE INDICES Nonlife Insurance -0.67 FTSE 250 Index -11.94 Travel & Leisure -26.56
Avast PLC 459.40 2.20 Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets PLC 186.20 5.25
Aveva Group PLC 4194 -60.00 National Grid PLC 933.00 -9.00
FTSE All-Share (612) 3607.61 0.45 3149.53 3591.59 3619.49 4035.47 3.66 1.41 19.39 97.30 6923.15 Industrial Metals & -0.95 Technology -12.04 Aerospace & Defense -32.23
Nov 18 Nov 17 Mnth Ago Nov 19 Nov 18 Mnth Ago Aviva PLC 315.00 -4.30 Natwest Group PLC 156.40 -1.40
FTSE All-Share ex Inv Co (423) 3486.26 0.40 3043.58 3472.30 3496.95 3958.16 3.76 1.39 19.16 95.56 3471.17 Household Goods & Ho -1.02 NON FINANCIALS Index -14.08 Fixed Line Telecomms -34.03 B&M European Value Retail S.A. 487.40 -21.40 Next PLC 6674 -46.00
FTSE All-Share ex Multinationals (542) 1155.06 1.07 1016.97 1142.82 1146.82 1207.10 3.10 1.18 27.35 20.74 2305.69 Australia - - - Sweden - - - Basic Materials -1.58 Software & Comp Serv -14.11 Banks -36.99 Bae Systems PLC 507.80 8.70 Ocado Group PLC 2330 38.00
FTSE Fledgling (92) 9507.03 0.54 8299.84 9456.38 9423.73 9481.18 2.91 0.02 2111.64 193.52 19515.54 Canada - - - Switzerland - - - Mining -1.79 Consumer Services -14.87 Automobiles & Parts -37.89 Barclays PLC 138.94 -2.66 Pearson PLC 639.00 15.00
FTSE Fledgling ex Inv Co (43) 11234.71 0.74 9808.15 11152.48 11051.41 11132.52 3.32 4.07 7.41 162.99 22544.47 Denmark - - - UK 78.34 78.02 77.31 General Retailers -2.24 FTSE All{HY-}Share Index -15.16 Oil Equipment & Serv -42.03 Barratt Developments PLC 652.40 -13.80 Pennon Group PLC 1022.5 -6.50
FTSE All-Small (352) 4040.58 0.98 3527.51 4001.26 3999.08 3846.50 3.56 -1.22 -23.10 81.40 8221.15 Japan - - - USA - - - Health Care -2.54 Industrial Transport -15.21 Oil & Gas -49.16 Berkeley Group Holdings (The) PLC 4769 -89.00 Persimmon PLC 2895 -18.00
FTSE All-Small ex Inv Co (185) 3443.20 0.58 3005.99 3423.33 3364.44 3340.54 3.88 -0.67 -38.65 48.22 7231.79 New Zealand - - - Euro - - - Media -15.52 Oil & Gas Producers -49.27 Bhp Group PLC 1621.4 -32.00 Phoenix Group Holdings PLC 776.20 6.20
FTSE AIM All-Share (715) 1018.21 0.59 888.92 1012.28 1007.11 894.10 1.00 0.54 185.28 6.28 1167.91 Norway - - -
BP PLC 243.75 -8.20 Polymetal International PLC 1678.5 -9.50
FTSE Sector Indices Source: Bank of England. New Sterling ERI base Jan 2005 = 100. Other indices base average 1990 = 100. British American Tobacco PLC 2780 -95.00 Prudential PLC 1278.5 -21.00
Non Financials (303) 4325.11 0.19 3775.92 4316.89 4349.06 4824.72 3.82 1.38 18.97 129.78 7295.32 Index rebased 1/2/95. for further information about ERIs see www.bankofengland.co.uk British Land Company PLC 480.10 -18.50 Reckitt Benckiser Group PLC 6728 22.00
Technology (19) 990.86 1.20 984.53 979.13 981.57 1008.10 1.28 0.38 203.97 9.64 1045.24 Bt Group PLC 128.00 -2.30 Relx PLC 1776.5 43.50
Software and Computer Services (17) 986.29 1.26 980.00 974.04 976.34 1004.28 1.28 0.35 220.86 9.80 1041.62 FTSE GLOBAL EQUITY INDEX SERIES Bunzl PLC 2380 16.00 Rentokil Initial PLC 515.60 -1.40
Technology Hardware and Equipment (2) 1095.05 -1.51 1088.06 1111.85 1121.56 1072.17 0.96 2.32 44.70 0.00 1132.37 Burberry Group PLC 1603 -30.50 Rightmove PLC 641.40 3.20
Nov 19 No of US $ Day Mth YTD Total
YTD Gr Div Nov 19 No of US $ Day Mth YTD Total YTD Gr Div Coca-Cola Hbc AG 2227 -48.00 Rio Tinto PLC 4716 -81.50
Telecommunications (8) 631.51 0.90 627.48 625.91 644.31 794.45 7.20 0.60 22.95 15.06 728.68
Regions & countries stocks indices % % % retn
% Yield Sectors stocks indices % % % retn % Yield Compass Group PLC 1350 4.00 Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC 98.56 -4.04
Telecommunications Equipment (2) 2554.26 -1.04 2537.96 2581.11 2594.81 2006.19 1.42 3.38 20.75 36.43 2717.06
Telecommunications Service Providers (6) 614.39 0.97 610.47 608.48 626.95 784.31 7.43 0.58 23.05 14.88 709.94 FTSE Global All Cap 9023 684.51 -0.4 4.9 7.5
9.6 1053.23
2.0 Oil Equipment & Services 24 179.17 -1.8 -1.8 -33.1 302.11 -29.6 6.1 Crh PLC 2975 -55.00 Royal Dutch Shell PLC 1182.2 -21.80
Health Care (15) 1260.79 -1.40 1252.75 1278.68 1313.80 1305.31 3.51 1.12 25.42 43.99 1400.30 FTSE Global All Cap 9023 684.51 -0.4 4.9 7.5
9.6 1053.23
2.0 Basic Materials 356 553.67 0.1 0.1 7.7 938.52 10.8 2.8 Croda International PLC 6248 218.00 Royal Dutch Shell PLC 1226 -32.00
Health Care Providers (4) 406.52 -0.09 403.93 406.88 412.46 759.02 2.11 0.36 130.87 3.93 420.30 FTSE Global Large Cap 1743 615.72 -0.4 4.4 8.5
10.7 975.81
2.0 Chemicals 163 814.92 0.6 0.6 8.6 1367.50 11.4 2.5 Dcc PLC 5514 -68.00 Rsa Insurance Group PLC 676.20 -0.60
Medical Equipment and Services (2) 1093.64 -0.81 1086.66 1102.57 1118.79 1204.85 2.05 1.09 44.56 22.38 1162.26 FTSE Global Mid Cap 2235 860.98 -0.5 6.2 3.8
5.6 1245.94
2.0 Forestry & Paper 21 287.00 0.2 0.2 3.2 545.28 6.4 2.6 Diageo PLC 2979.5 2.50 Sage Group PLC 679.80 -1.40
Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology (9) 1320.93 -1.47 1312.50 1340.68 1379.30 1339.89 3.66 1.13 24.16 48.36 1476.62 FTSE Global Small Cap 5045 916.24 -0.5 6.9 5.9
7.6 1275.09
1.7 Industrial Metals & Mining 93 388.95 0.0 0.0 2.9 665.43 6.2 3.5 Evraz PLC 377.90 -4.70 Sainsbury (J) PLC 222.00 3.50
FTSE All-World 3978 402.11 -0.4 4.7 7.7
9.9 654.79
2.0 Mining 79 793.68 -0.7 -0.7 8.9 1375.61 12.6 3.2 Experian PLC 2933 21.00 Schroders PLC 2975 -43.00
Financials (253) 798.19 1.32 793.10 787.80 795.55 899.49 3.21 1.89 16.48 14.51 879.95
FTSE World 2568 713.21 -0.5 4.7 7.4
9.5 1558.74
2.0 Industrials 746 498.45 -0.4 -0.4 11.0 766.90 12.9 1.6 Ferguson PLC 8068 60.00 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust PLC 1044 34.00
Banks (11) 536.91 1.85 533.49 527.15 535.63 785.94 3.86 2.22 11.65 0.22 586.30
FTSE Global All Cap ex UNITED KINGDOM In 8733 723.37 -0.5 4.7 8.7
10.8 1093.03
1.9 Construction & Materials 147 606.56 -0.1 -0.1 9.4 980.06 11.5 1.8 Flutter Entertainment PLC 12735 -135.00 Segro PLC 908.60 4.00
Finance and Credit Services (8) 1081.53 3.31 1074.63 1046.84 1036.68 1113.10 3.27 5.06 6.04 11.02 1154.40
FTSE Global All Cap ex USA 7274 531.21 0.3 7.7 2.4
4.9 892.02
2.5 Aerospace & Defense 36 720.15 -0.4 -0.4 -19.5 1091.04 -18.4 2.0 Fresnillo PLC 1114.5 -3.50 Severn Trent PLC 2452 -38.00
Investment Banking and Brokerage Services (31) 1026.15 0.84 1019.61 1017.63 1025.03 1061.72 3.37 0.94 31.71 31.06 1135.83
FTSE Global All Cap ex JAPAN 7626 706.14 -0.4 4.7 7.7
9.8 1096.64
2.0 General Industrials 70 238.77 -0.6 -0.6 4.8 402.61 7.2 2.4 Glaxosmithkline PLC 1395 20.20 Smith & Nephew PLC 1449.5 -23.50
Closed End Investments (189) 1188.86 1.05 1181.27 1176.50 1196.49 1055.83 2.38 1.82 23.15 24.88 1281.96
FTSE Global All Cap ex Eurozone 8382 720.46 -0.5 4.6 8.2
10.3 1085.66
1.9 Electronic & Electrical Equipment 140 609.77 -0.4 -0.4 19.8 851.65 21.7 1.4 Glencore PLC 190.44 -3.42 Smith (Ds) PLC 327.00 -4.40
Life Insurance (7) 791.65 0.91 786.60 784.49 779.51 843.73 3.36 2.15 13.85 25.55 901.30
FTSE Developed 2139 653.22 -0.6 4.4 7.9
9.9 1013.36
2.0 Industrial Engineering 148 981.41 0.1 0.1 18.3 1502.11 20.5 1.5 Gvc Holdings PLC 970.20 9.80 Smiths Group PLC 1530.5 -0.50
Nonlife Insurance (7) 1012.70 2.10 1006.24 991.82 982.93 924.68 2.91 1.86 18.45 28.74 1122.29
FTSE Developed All Cap 5627 682.48 -0.6 4.7 7.7
9.7 1043.83
1.9 Industrial Transportation 122 902.85 -0.3 -0.3 19.2 1397.41 21.2 1.7 Halma PLC 2423 73.00 Smurfit Kappa Group PLC 3222 -60.00
Real Estate (56) 864.30 0.01 858.79 864.20 863.75 985.23 3.39 -1.43 -20.60 17.67 954.68
FTSE Developed Large Cap 835 612.40 -0.5 4.1 8.6
10.8 966.92
2.0 Support Services 83 597.58 -0.9 -0.9 18.4 867.54 19.9 1.2 Hargreaves Lansdown PLC 1468.5 -57.50 Spirax-Sarco Engineering PLC 11500 35.00
Real Estate Investment and Services (17) 879.28 0.60 873.67 874.01 873.09 918.88 1.77 2.28 24.83 9.59 932.43
FTSE Developed Europe Large Cap 226 374.44 0.4 7.5 -2.5
0.1 699.10
2.7 Consumer Goods 532 570.84 0.2 0.2 11.9 919.72 14.2 2.2 Hikma Pharmaceuticals PLC 2596 50.00 Sse PLC 1363 -44.00
Real Estate Investment Trusts (39) 861.18 -0.08 855.68 861.84 861.46 997.24 3.63 -1.70 -16.15 19.10 958.04
FTSE Developed Europe Mid Cap 344 654.47 0.5 9.0 3.5
5.4 1068.85
2.3 Automobiles & Parts 128 525.90 2.5 2.5 38.1 826.35 40.7 1.7 Homeserve PLC 1176 -28.00 St. James's Place PLC 1085 -15.50
Consumer Discretionary (92) 869.46 0.66 863.92 863.76 868.62 983.66 2.95 1.32 25.67 9.50 943.61
FTSE Dev Europe Small Cap 693 885.90 0.9 9.6 -1.4
0.4 1393.47
2.0 Beverages 67 707.23 -0.9 -0.9 -0.1 1147.73 1.8 2.4 HSBC Holdings PLC 383.85 -0.95 Standard Chartered PLC 438.60 -5.50
Automobiles and Parts (3) 394.94 3.37 392.42 382.05 362.43 498.59 1.44 4.76 14.57 0.00 416.02
FTSE North America Large Cap 225 785.20 -1.0 1.8 12.6
14.6 1144.41
1.6 Food Producers 132 700.00 -0.3 -0.3 2.6 1151.41 5.0 2.4 Imperial Brands PLC 1505 -42.00 Standard Life Aberdeen PLC 270.10 -3.10
Consumer Services (4) 879.57 -3.33 873.95 909.82 921.15 1257.76 2.80 1.35 26.39 16.22 933.72
FTSE North America Mid Cap 412 996.02 -1.1 4.9 5.3
6.8 1338.11
1.8 Household Goods & Home Construction 62 572.90 -0.5 -0.5 13.1 918.34 15.6 2.2 Informa PLC 582.60 -2.40 Taylor Wimpey PLC 167.50 1.50
Household Goods and Home Construction (12) 966.17 2.63 960.01 941.43 923.29 958.08 4.73 1.32 15.96 9.21 1105.70
FTSE North America Small Cap 1293 1033.77 -1.1 6.9 8.3
9.7 1340.43
1.5 Leisure Goods 43 289.67 -0.6 -0.6 19.6 399.37 21.1 1.2 Intercontinental Hotels Group PLC 4482 -131.00 Tesco PLC 236.10 2.90
Leisure Goods (2) 1122.69 0.28 1115.53 1119.51 1112.16 832.90 2.20 0.99 45.89 12.50 1241.24
FTSE North America 637 511.18 -1.0 2.4 11.4
13.3 761.21
1.7 Personal Goods 87 1005.87 0.0 0.0 11.6 1497.85 13.2 1.4 Intermediate Capital Group PLC 1720 -9.00 Unilever PLC 4463 -59.00
Personal Goods (4) 795.18 0.71 790.11 789.59 787.86 973.05 2.97 1.74 19.34 0.00 833.16
FTSE Developed ex North America 1502 276.33 0.3 8.6 1.6
4.0 499.82
2.5 Tobacco 13 887.58 -0.5 -0.5 -10.9 2215.63 -6.0 7.0 International Consolidated Airlines Group S.A. 155.30 -3.50 United Utilities Group PLC 917.00 -9.20
Media (11) 865.12 0.87 859.60 857.65 868.58 997.08 2.32 2.42 17.81 15.65 942.82
FTSE Japan Large Cap 180 427.20 -0.3 9.4 7.7
10.2 599.29
2.2 Health Care 307 656.60 -1.2 -1.2 7.5 1010.25 9.4 1.8 Intertek Group PLC 6032 40.00 Vodafone Group PLC 121.66 -1.34
Retailers (22) 1012.09 1.25 1005.64 999.58 1003.81 926.03 2.87 1.09 31.94 3.02 1088.74
FTSE Japan Mid Cap 335 624.86 -0.2 6.6 -0.6
1.4 830.77
2.1 Health Care Equipment & Services 111 1332.38 -1.6 -1.6 13.6 1603.69 14.4 0.7 Jd Sports Fashion PLC 801.60 -5.80 Whitbread PLC 3057 -63.00
Travel and Leisure (34) 743.66 0.68 738.91 738.60 748.50 917.83 2.66 0.53 71.16 5.90 797.72
FTSE Global wi JAPAN Small Cap 882 681.50 -0.3 3.8 -2.1
0.0 938.60
2.2 Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology 196 425.28 -0.9 -0.9 3.6 695.53 6.0 2.4 Johnson Matthey PLC 2408 -142.00 Wpp PLC 740.80 -7.80
Consumer Staples (27) 863.49 0.32 857.98 860.73 863.88 861.55 4.15 1.61 14.99 29.73 965.04
FTSE Japan 515 177.22 -0.3 8.9 6.0
8.4 278.26
2.2 Consumer Services 440 659.19 -0.5 -0.5 18.2 922.80 19.3 1.1 Just Eat Takeaway.Com N.V. 8052 22.00
Beverages (6) 1074.10 -0.57 1067.25 1080.31 1093.47 1132.82 2.43 1.63 25.20 24.25 1152.27
FTSE Asia Pacific Large Cap ex Japan 936 822.74 0.5 7.5 13.2
15.8 1422.12
2.2 Food & Drug Retailers 68 290.19 -0.1 -0.1 -1.6 439.99 0.9 2.5
Food Producers (10) 808.58 -0.28 803.42 810.89 817.51 905.09 2.58 1.87 20.77 9.02 858.40
FTSE Asia Pacific Mid Cap ex Japan 900 947.81 0.7 7.9 9.4
11.8 1571.52
2.7 General Retailers 145 1233.17 -0.6 -0.6 36.2 1659.21 37.1 0.6
Tobacco (2) 555.30 1.21 551.76 548.65 540.66 569.40 8.12 1.25 9.89 32.40 675.08
Industrials (93) 1029.51 -0.19 1022.94 1031.44 1033.31 1008.01 1.99 0.70 72.03 13.63 1098.44
FTSE Asia Pacific Small Cap ex Japan
FTSE Asia Pacific Ex Japan
1885 598.57
1836 641.47
0.5
0.5
5.0
7.5
10.2
12.6
12.9
15.5
970.58
2.5 Media
1177.81
2.3 Travel & Leisure
87 420.09
140 475.34
-0.3
-0.2
-0.3
-0.2
9.3 592.05
-8.2 680.16
10.4
-7.1
1.1
1.7
UK STOCK MARKET TRADING DATA
Construction and Materials (16) 978.98 0.13 972.74 977.67 985.44 959.17 2.23 0.14 323.87 18.13 1061.60 Nov 19 Nov 18 Nov 17 Nov 16 Nov 13 Yr Ago
FTSE Emerging All Cap 3396 840.13 0.5 6.6 6.3
8.9 1380.52
2.4 Telecommunication 98 150.74 -0.4 -0.4 -6.0 327.54 -2.1 4.6
Aerospace and Defense (9) 743.79 0.62 739.05 739.20 730.18 1027.02 3.16 -1.87 -16.96 19.60 801.91 - - - - - -
FTSE Emerging Large Cap 908 815.16 0.5 6.6 7.6
10.2 1348.03
2.2 Fixed Line Telecommuniations 43 116.51 -0.5 -0.5 -14.0 284.40 -9.7 5.7
Electronic and Electrical Equipment (11) 1168.44 -0.60 1160.99 1175.54 1183.98 1074.99 1.62 1.78 34.80 12.68 1234.88 Order Book Turnover (m) 47.05 183.17 107.82 148.01 148.01 148.01
FTSE Emerging Mid Cap 931 961.62 1.0 8.2 -1.2
1.5 1579.25
3.1 Mobile Telecommunications 55 175.53 -0.3 -0.3 5.2 333.40 8.6 3.3
General Industrials (8) 1104.10 -0.44 1097.05 1108.99 1109.20 980.64 2.56 0.64 61.15 13.61 1185.51 Order Book Bargains 1054371.00 1225393.00 1381763.00 952448.00 952448.00 952448.00
FTSE Emerging Small Cap 1557 782.62 0.5 4.5 3.5
6.2 1233.59
2.7 Utilities 191 316.73 -0.9 -0.9 -0.3 692.99 2.8 3.3
Industrial Engineering (4) 1339.81 -1.99 1331.26 1367.00 1370.03 1058.36 1.49 1.80 37.22 8.86 1404.93 Order Book Shares Traded (m) 1778.00 2165.00 2394.00 1714.00 1714.00 1714.00
FTSE Emerging Europe 76 333.43 1.9 15.7 -24.2
-20.3 629.97
5.8 Electricity 131 355.99 -1.0 -1.0 0.0 767.91 3.1 3.3
Industrial Support Services (34) 1081.04 -0.07 1074.14 1081.81 1087.63 1024.30 1.42 1.94 36.44 10.70 1144.76 Total Equity Turnover (£m) 4293.29 4862.83 6388.74 4761.57 4761.57 4761.57
FTSE Latin America All Cap 240 734.67 0.6 15.2 -25.4
-23.7 1253.91
2.7 Gas Water & Multiutilities 60 317.72 -0.8 -0.8 -1.1 717.39 1.9 3.3
Industrial Transportation (11) 1090.17 -0.43 1083.21 1094.93 1088.51 955.51 2.35 2.22 19.16 11.02 1174.36 Total Mkt Bargains 1275635.00 1460867.00 1683466.00 1156065.00 1156065.00 1156065.00
FTSE Middle East and Africa All Cap 321 624.94 0.4 5.6 -9.4
-6.8 3.3 Financials
1078.96 867 240.20 -0.1 -0.1 -9.2 435.33 -6.7 2.9
Basic Materials (26) 1161.95 0.75 1154.54 1153.33 1163.72 1060.16 3.95 2.74 9.26 48.02 1344.64 FTSE Global wi UNITED KINGDOM All Cap In 290 304.30 0.7 11.8 -14.9
-12.5 3.8 Banks
579.90 272 172.85 0.5 0.5 -19.1 343.99 -16.4 3.8 Total Shares Traded (m) 7086.00 8883.00 11338.00 12027.00 12027.00 12027.00
Industrial Materials (3) 874.96 0.29 869.38 872.47 876.85 871.58 2.82 2.64 13.42 19.91 963.76 † Excluding intra-market and overseas turnover. *UK only total at 6pm. ‡ UK plus intra-market turnover. (u) Unavaliable.
FTSE Global wi USA All Cap 1749 882.28 -1.0 2.9 11.8
13.5 1.6 Nonlife Insurance
1241.04 74 293.19 -0.4 -0.4 -5.0 459.98 -2.8 2.1
Industrial Metals and Mining (12) 1228.22 0.93 1220.38 1216.89 1228.67 1127.22 4.32 2.80 8.26 57.75 1452.75 (c) Market closed.
FTSE Europe All Cap 1414 445.63 0.5 8.1 -2.0
0.4 2.7 Life Insurance
799.87 54 222.94 0.5 0.5 -7.6 398.98 -4.3 3.3
Precious Metals and Mining (5) 1254.78 0.64 1246.77 1246.75 1249.68 876.01 3.27 1.09 28.02 41.30 1378.45
FTSE Eurozone All Cap 641 436.94 0.5 8.4 0.5
2.7 2.2 Financial Services
781.52 209 391.04 -0.4 -0.4 5.6 574.59 7.5 1.8
Chemicals (6) 960.59 -0.52 954.46 965.60 974.84 934.82 1.70 3.39 17.39 12.94 1020.16
FTSE EDHEC-Risk Efficient All-World 3978 445.76 -0.4 5.6 3.0
5.0 2.2 Technology
670.27 313 481.76 -0.6 -0.6 34.0 617.58 35.3 0.9
Energy (13) 463.06 0.32 460.11 461.60 458.26 882.36 6.79 1.19 12.34 30.30 545.31 All data provided by Morningstar unless otherwise noted. All elements listed are indicative and believed
FTSE EDHEC-Risk Efficient Developed Europe 570 350.13 0.5 7.5 3.6
5.6 2.3 Software & Computer Services
583.28 165 799.49 -0.7 -0.7 31.5 957.06 32.2 0.5
Oil. Gas and Coal (13) 463.71 0.32 460.75 462.25 458.91 883.59 6.79 1.19 12.34 30.34 546.07 accurate at the time of publication. No offer is made by Morningstar or the FT. The FT does not warrant nor
Oil & Gas 128 239.67 -0.8 14.6 -34.1
-30.8 447.32
5.5 Technology Hardware & Equipment 148 382.16 -0.5 -0.5 37.4 522.54 39.5 1.4
Utilities (10) 999.78 1.39 993.40 986.10 992.81 981.15 5.68 1.01 17.51 36.97 1176.32 Oil & Gas Producers 93 225.69 -0.7 16.7 -36.1
-32.8 430.69
5.6 Alternative Energy 11 211.91 0.9 0.9 67.4 301.19 69.9 0.8 guarantee that the information is reliable or complete. The FT does not accept responsibility and will not be
Real Estate Investment & Services 161 352.86 0.2 0.2 -4.4 649.95 -1.4 2.7 liable for any loss arising from the reliance on or use of the listed information.
Hourly movements 8.00 9.00 10.00 11.00 12.00 13.00 14.00 15.00 16.00 High/day Low/day Real Estate Investment Trusts 97 452.45 -1.3 -1.3 -8.7 990.88 -6.0 3.7 For all queries e-mail ft.reader.enquiries@morningstar.com
FTSE 100 6330.03 6321.03 6328.64 6318.31 6334.05 6344.28 6340.20 6336.75 6323.69 6348.29 6314.43 FTSE Global Large Cap 1743 615.72 -0.4 -0.4 8.5 975.81 10.7 2.0
FTSE 250
FTSE SmallCap
19599.27 19557.35 19609.81 19604.90 19600.60 19598.72 19558.86 19530.75 19486.08 19626.68 19484.38
5843.03 5833.48 5836.32 5831.17 5839.94 5837.88 5834.27 5832.89 5829.54 5847.21 5823.20
The FTSE Global Equity Series, launched in 2003, contains the FTSE Global Small Cap Indices and broader FTSE Global All Cap Indices (large/mid/small cap) as well as the enhanced FTSE All-World index Series (large/
mid cap) - please see www.ftse.com/geis. The trade names Fundamental Index® and RAFI® are registered trademarks and the patented and patent-pending proprietary intellectual property of Research Affiliates, LLC
Data provided by Morningstar | www.morningstar.co.uk
FTSE All-Share 3579.85 3574.29 3579.43 3574.56 3581.63 3586.09 3582.91 3580.44 3573.09 3588.59 3570.50 (US Patent Nos. 7,620,577; 7,747,502; 7,778,905; 7,792,719; Patent Pending Publ. Nos. US-2006-0149645-A1, US-2007-0055598-A1, US-2008-0288416-A1, US-2010- 0063942-A1, WO 2005/076812, WO 2007/078399 A2,
Time of FTSE 100 Day's high:08:10:15 Day's Low09:05:30 FTSE 100 2010/11 High: 7674.56(17/01/2020) Low: 4993.89(23/03/2020) WO 2008/118372, EPN 1733352, and HK1099110). ”EDHEC™” is a trade mark of EDHEC Business School As of January 2nd 2006, FTSE is basing its sector indices on the Industrial Classification Benchmark - please see
Time of FTSE All-Share Day's high:08:11:00 Day's Low15:28:00 FTSE 100 2010/11 High: 4257.93(17/01/2020) Low: 2727.86(23/03/2020) www.ftse.com/icb. For constituent changes and other information about FTSE, please see www.ftse.com. © FTSE International Limited. 2013. All Rights reserved. ”FTSE®” is a trade mark of the London Stock Exchange
Further information is available on http://www.ftse.com © FTSE International Limited. 2013. All Rights reserved. ”FTSE®” is a trade mark of the Group companies and is used by FTSE International Limited under licence.
London Stock Exchange Group companies and is used by FTSE International Limited under licence. † Sector P/E ratios greater than 80 are not shown.
For changes to FTSE Fledgling Index constituents please refer to www.ftse.com/indexchanges. ‡ Values are negative.

UK RIGHTS OFFERS UK COMPANY RESULTS UK RECENT EQUITY ISSUES

Amount Latest Company Turnover Pre-tax EPS(p) Div(p) Pay day Total Issue Issue Stock Close Mkt
Issue paid renun. closing Charles Stanley Group Int 81.936 85.399 4.797 8.094 7.060 13.360 0.00000 3.00000 - 5.967 9.000 date price(p) Sector code Stock price(p) +/- High Low Cap (£m)
price up date High Low Stock Price p +or- CMC Markets Int 256.100 124.873 141.106 30.095 38.300 9.500 0.00000 2.85000 - 12.113 3.530 11/03 20.00 AIM VRCI Verici Dx PLC 42.00 1.00 56.00 29.97 5953.4
There are currently no rights offers by any companies listed on the LSE. Euromoney Institutional Investor Pre 335.256 401.673 32.909 82.859 28.800 56.600 0.00000 22.30000 - 0.000 33.100 10/29 162.00 AIM SBI SourceBio International PLC 173.50 -0.50 188.50 160.00 12870.8
Grainger Pre 208.700 222.200 110.800 131.300 14.300 19.900 3.64000 3.46000 Feb 15 5.470 5.190 10/26 0.04 AMOI Anemoi International Ltd 2.30 -0.92 4.80 1.06 69.0
Halma Int 618.400 653.700 96.300 105.800 20.370 22.400 0.00000 6.54000 - 9.906 16.140
Investec Int 712.688 941.515 112.845 260.490 9.600 24.700 0.00000 11.00000 - 0.000 24.500
Jet2 Int 299.900 2528.800 119.300L 337.000 40.300L 187.000 0.00000 3.00000 - 0.000 10.400
Johnson Matthey Int 6979.000 6818.000 26.000 225.000 12.300 91.800 0.00000 24.50000 - 30.955 86.750
LondonMetric Property Int 60.700 53.500 85.400 10.700L 9.540 1.330L 0.00000 2.00000 - 2.287 4.500
MITIE Group Int 972.400 1078.000 2.100 14.600 0.400L 9.000 0.00000 0.68551 - 0.000 2.062
Naked Wines Int 157.098 87.463 8.892L 6.211L 11.100L 9.000L 0.00000 0.00000 - 0.000 0.000
Polar Capital Holdings Int 68.826 71.322 27.041 24.949 23.400 21.600 9.00000 8.00000 Jan 8 33.863 33.000
Royal Mail Int 5671.000 5166.000 17.000 173.000 1.400 15.300 0.00000 7.50000 - 0.000 24.500
Sabien Technology Group Pre 0.454 1.379 1.409L 0.182 0.110L 0.040 0.00000 0.00000 - 0.000 0.000

Figures in £m. Earnings shown basic. Figures in light text are for corresponding period year earlier. §Placing price. *Intoduction. ‡When issued. Annual report/prospectus available at www.ft.com/ir
For more information on dividend payments visit www.ft.com/marketsdata For a full explanation of all the other symbols please refer to London Share Service notes.
Friday 20 November 2020 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 13

MARKET DATA

FT500: THE WORLD'S LARGEST COMPANIES

52 Week 52 Week 52 Week 52 Week 52 Week 52 Week
Stock Price Day Chg High Low Yld P/E MCap m Stock Price Day Chg High Low Yld P/E MCap m Stock Price Day Chg High Low Yld P/E MCap m Stock Price Day Chg High Low Yld P/E MCap m Stock Price Day Chg High Low Yld P/E MCap m Stock Price Day Chg High Low Yld P/E MCap m
Australia (A$) Finland (€) Japan (¥) Sweden (SKr) AT&T 28.23 -0.39 39.55 26.08 7.85 16.08 201166.98 Lockheed 374.32 -3.24 442.53 266.11 2.62 15.63 104728.65
ANZ 22.45 0.44 27.29 14.10 6.40 15.70 46361.35 Nokia 3.25 -0.05 4.35 2.08 1.56 29.50 21766.33 AstellasPh 1596.5 -36.00 1987 0.00 2.58 15.46 28609.11 AtlasCpcoB 386.30 1.60 388.60 223.20 1.70 31.95 17453.31 AutomData 173.43 0.27 182.32 103.11 2.17 28.43 74369.21 Lowes 149.16 2.42 180.67 60.00 1.49 19.61 112725.59
BHPBilltn 36.51 -0.32 41.47 24.05 5.69 15.80 78196.51 SampoA 36.57 -0.03 42.46 21.34 4.16 24.34 23994.29 Bridgestne 3679 19.00 4435 2861.5 3.64 14.93 25272.59 Ericsson 104.35 0.90 110.15 59.54 1.42 24.36 37120.53 Avago Tech 377.86 -2.76 393.89 155.67 3.31 70.37 152844.87 Lyondell 80.61 -1.59 95.82 33.71 5.58 12.41 26917.22
CmwBkAu 78.87 1.32 91.05 53.44 5.54 19.22 101731.09 France (€) Canon 1903.5 11.00 3117 0.00 6.50 27.12 24436.39 H&M 173.00 -1.35 214.35 98.13 2.77 97.73 29257.92 BakerHu 22.08 0.09 31.26 20.09 3.24 -1.40 11412.93 Marathon Ptl 38.64 0.10 63.89 15.26 6.15 -3.04 25141.14
CSL 310.27 -2.26 342.75 242.67 0.96 45.53 102634.03 Airbus Grpe 89.33 -0.67 139.40 48.12 - -15.33 82928.41 CntJpRwy 14665 15.00 22915 0.00 1.05 14.40 29077.34 Investor 598.00 -2.40 604.60 370.10 2.15 5.88 31536.91 BankAm 26.69 -0.29 35.72 17.95 2.89 12.05 230889.58 Marsh&M 113.81 1.81 120.97 74.34 1.71 26.86 57723.36
NatAusBk 22.70 0.41 27.49 13.20 6.56 22.63 54302.91 AirLiquide 138.85 - 144.45 94.86 1.97 28.67 77858.42 Denso 5106 -85.00 5335 0.00 2.83 -48.52 38724.16 Nordea Bk 73.71 -0.28 86.73 48.00 - 25.36 34563.75 Baxter 79.07 -1.36 95.19 69.10 1.22 41.27 40387.86 MasterCard 335.66 -0.28 367.25 199.99 0.47 43.44 331789.99
Telstra 3.10 0.02 3.94 2.66 3.27 19.99 26805.83 AXA 18.93 -0.11 25.62 11.84 3.91 16.10 54195.97 EastJpRwy 6559 31.00 10325 0.00 2.59 -49.81 23859.27 SEB 91.24 0.20 104.90 59.80 - 12.23 22924.17 BB & T 54.24 0.75 55.66 40.68 3.52 16.82 41564.3 McDonald's 214.13 -1.39 231.91 124.23 2.45 31.71 159550.62
Wesfarmers 49.45 0.78 49.67 29.75 3.14 34.05 40764.56 BNP Parib 40.81 -0.33 54.22 24.51 - 7.24 60381.99 Fanuc 24585 40.00 24950 0.00 0.96 77.32 47781.46 SvnskaHn 85.26 -0.16 113.80 71.70 - 10.96 19198.16 BectonDick 233.63 0.16 286.72 197.75 1.44 77.14 67721.99 McKesson 170.72 -5.81 187.67 112.60 1.03 29.32 27411.57
Westpc 19.90 0.45 26.10 13.47 7.85 16.64 52254.98 ChristianDior 424.60 1.00 484.60 252.40 1.15 41.41 90746.39 FastRetail 83250-1950.00 88630 0.00 0.59 87.29 84995.73 Swedbank 155.60 -1.44 162.70 99.14 - 13.78 20394.02 BerkshHat 342829.51-2762.48 352500 239440 - 23.72 222559.43 Medtronic 110.17 0.70 122.15 72.13 2.01 33.54 148085.47
Woolworths 38.17 -0.31 43.96 32.12 2.73 40.85 35115.7 Cred Agr 8.87 -0.05 13.80 5.70 - 6.42 30302.24 Fuji Hvy Ind 2145 -50.00 2959.5 1671.5 4.80 20.35 15880.28 Telia Co 36.25 -0.10 42.41 30.29 5.66 48.97 17164.72 Biogen 244.73 3.75 374.99 223.25 - 7.89 37659.44 Merck 79.58 -0.67 92.64 65.25 3.20 18.09 201340.14
Belgium (€) Danone 52.90 -1.70 75.16 46.03 - 17.91 43006.32 Hitachi 3963 2.00 4693 0.00 2.47 19.34 36919.29 Volvo 199.85 -0.35 202.00 95.00 - 24.54 36614.3 BkNYMeln 38.16 -0.59 51.60 26.40 3.48 7.72 33810.51 Metlife♦ 44.81 -0.90 53.28 22.85 4.25 5.42 40323.99
AnBshInBv 55.17 -0.99 75.26 29.03 2.37-110.98 110605.35 EDF 11.91 0.29 13.61 5.98 1.28 22.13 43695.28 HondaMtr 2961.5 7.50 3259 0.00 3.31 24.91 51634.3 BlackRock 669.85 -0.04 692.73 323.98 2.21 22.04 102159.3 Microsoft♦ 211.32 0.24 232.86 132.52 1.01 34.281597646.21
Switzerland (SFr)
KBC Grp 56.76 -1.44 73.56 33.44 1.79 15.83 27983.47 Engie SA 12.06 -0.16 16.80 8.63 - -26.39 34759.31 JapanTob 2154.5 0.50 2555 0.00 7.37 12.60 41474.56 Boeing 204.44 1.14 374.83 89.00 3.23 -37.98 115412.45 Mnstr Bvrg 83.81 -0.41 88.41 50.06 - 36.94 44244.7
ABB 24.54 -0.77 25.50 14.11 3.17 114.37 58333.9
EssilorLuxottica 114.15 -2.25 145.00 86.76 - -3748.14 59280.23 KDDI 3092 12.00 3451 2604 3.83 10.51 68574.27 Booking Holdings 2053.61 9.01 2128.02 1107.29 - 32.76 84105.21 MondelezInt 57.06 -0.70 59.96 41.19 2.14 22.88 81605.09
Brazil (R$) CredSuisse 11.10 -0.08 13.80 6.18 1.29 6.53 29788.4
Hermes Intl 848.40 1.20 859.80 516.00 0.54 79.14 106045.64 Keyence 52310 430.00 54160 28905 0.30 65.42 122452.42 BrisMySq 61.37 -0.64 68.34 45.76 3.07-197.75 138861.27 Monsanto 127.95 0.02 127.97 114.19 1.64 23.62 56462.29
Ambev 14.74 -0.10 19.58 10.36 3.45 25.35 43661.33 Nestle 104.12 -0.84 112.62 83.37 2.67 21.64 328878.11
LOreal 310.80 -3.80 321.40 196.00 1.26 52.97 206021.17 MitsbCp 2535 28.00 2960.5 0.00 5.37 9.08 36251.1 CapOne 84.29 -1.32 107.59 38.00 2.03-212.87 38554 MorganStly 58.30 -0.51 60.13 27.20 2.57 9.85 105476.26
Bradesco 22.32 0.03 32.45 14.05 1.08 7.48 18634.94 Novartis 79.10 0.31 96.38 65.09 3.76 25.81 213950.8
LVMH 488.65 2.50 489.95 278.70 1.00 54.76 292034.8 MitsubEst 1789.5 4.50 2283 0.00 1.90 15.58 23964.41 CardinalHlth 51.93 -1.39 60.69 39.05 3.98 -3.85 15237.33 MylanNV 15.86 0.31 23.11 12.75 - 27.88 8586.21
Cielo 3.75 -0.01 9.07 3.23 2.14 14.09 1917.88 Richemont 75.14 -0.58 81.66 44.64 2.62 42.77 43003.05
Orange 10.39 -0.11 15.38 8.63 4.89 10.44 32707.82 MitsubishiEle 1468.5 5.00 1658 0.00 2.81 15.52 30349.53 Carnival 17.84 0.25 51.94 7.80 5.53 -1.73 12858.4 Netflix 484.20 2.41 575.37 290.25 - 76.48 213914.93
ItauHldFin 25.85 -0.01 32.79 19.46 3.24 12.87 24128.03 Roche 305.65 -2.95 357.85 265.75 3.03 19.85 235432.84
PernodRic 160.90 -1.10 171.70 112.25 1.97 125.79 49889.22 MitsuiFud 2181.5 19.00 3035 1538 2.08 12.56 20564.35 Caterpillar♦ 171.35 -1.39 176.37 87.50 2.57 21.38 93087.31 NextEraE 74.98 -0.81 83.34 43.70 7.56 9.68 36722.84
Petrobras♦ 24.30 0.07 33.23 10.50 2.23 - 34044.91 Swiss Re 81.26 -1.80 117.05 52.68 7.28 -17.90 28286.19
Renault 31.15 -0.23 45.07 12.77 - -0.99 10905.02 MitUFJFin 461.10 -7.10 603.00 380.00 5.56 19.14 60278.66 Celgene 108.24 0.11 110.70 58.59 - 12.71 77035.98 Nike 130.96 -0.68 136.35 60.00 0.74 78.46 164323.55
Vale 66.76 0.31 68.10 32.45 2.99 46.97 66412.21 Swisscom 478.80 -6.50 577.80 446.70 4.73 14.79 27193.04
Safran 120.25 -2.10 152.30 51.10 - 75.93 60828.47 Mizuho Fin 1406.5 15.50 1716 1084 5.50 31.45 34375.63 CharlesSch♦ 47.18 -0.52 51.65 28.00 1.59 18.45 84792.47 NorfolkS 240.54 -1.33 247.98 112.62 1.67 27.96 65981.59
Canada (C$) Syngent 453.40 0.90 471.20 402.50 - 28.99 43035.76
Sanofi 85.64 -0.45 95.82 67.65 3.73 9.53 127656.89 Murata Mfg 8161 - 8340 0.00 1.22 28.82 53083.68 Charter Comms 650.17 7.73 663.70 345.67 - 58.25 129952.81 Northrop 308.15 -2.45 385.01 263.31 1.84 20.54 51373.53
BCE 56.69 0.04 65.28 46.03 5.90 20.27 39173.49 UBS 13.10 -0.06 13.28 7.00 2.57 9.24 55425.53
Sant Gbn 39.41 -0.38 40.24 16.41 3.19 16.14 24995.91 NipponTT 2486.5 29.00 2908 2127 3.94 10.44 93356.88 Chevron Corp 84.39 0.11 122.72 51.60 6.29 -17.00 157586.79 NXP 150.78 2.63 152.48 58.41 1.06-2348.21 42180.64
BkMontrl♦ 91.70 0.19 104.75 55.76 4.52 13.39 45302.28 Zurich Fin 365.80 -7.50 439.90 248.70 5.56 17.10 60342.43
Schneider 118.75 1.40 121.80 61.72 2.18 29.61 79730.27 Nissan Mt 477.00 -4.70 689.50 311.20 2.16 -1.88 19378.02 Chubb 146.69 -2.59 167.74 87.35 2.21 28.62 66211.54 Occid Pet 12.96 0.09 47.58 8.52 19.65 -0.93 12068.48
BkNvaS 62.67 -0.20 76.60 46.38 5.65 11.33 58013.45 Nomura 513.60 -6.40 586.40 367.40 4.01 5.23 17270.25 Taiwan (NT$) Cigna 204.82 -6.12 224.96 118.50 0.02 13.61 73992.96 Oracle 56.22 -0.04 62.60 39.71 1.69 17.96 169257.07
SFR Group 34.50 - 34.56 21.87 - -23.02 17905.81
Brookfield 52.74 -0.71 60.48 31.35 1.20-381.68 63471.93 Nppn Stl 1183 -53.50 1786.5 0.00 4.36 5.99 10820.83 Chunghwa Telecom 110.00 - 120.00 103.00 8.18 25.15 29935.21 Cisco 40.81 -0.51 50.28 32.40 3.51 15.34 172259.81 Pepsico 143.01 -0.37 147.20 101.42 2.83 27.69 197633.6
SocGen 16.19 -0.23 32.23 10.77 - -17.91 16354.29
CanadPcR 439.61 -1.62 444.49 252.00 0.78 26.02 45177.84 NTTDCMo 3866 -26.00 3928 2678 3.20 20.54 120139.4 Formosa PetChem 94.00 1.00 104.50 66.10 3.191009.66 31412.9 Citigroup♦ 51.49 0.44 83.11 32.00 4.24 8.29 107189.69 Perrigo 48.10 -0.09 63.86 40.01 1.94 25.68 6565.23
Total 34.11 -0.66 50.93 21.12 7.89 -29.48 107150.29
CanImp 109.08 -0.32 115.96 67.52 5.23 12.89 37215.57 Panasonic 1086.5 17.50 1264 691.70 2.85 14.82 25658.56 HonHaiPrc 82.90 0.20 101.50 65.70 4.99 10.85 40316.49 CME Grp 166.46 0.68 225.36 131.80 2.06 23.46 59757.05 Pfizer♦ 35.96 -0.36 39.78 26.41 4.40 13.28 199879.94
UnibailR 190.00 0.35 236.45 177.35 2.94 -7.05 22215.04
CanNatRs 27.42 -0.99 42.57 9.80 6.00 888.68 24745.56 Seven & I 3345 -27.00 4419 2937.5 2.85 16.95 28539.86 MediaTek 733.00 1.00 763.00 273.00 2.75 42.91 40888.37 Coca-Cola 52.47 -0.14 60.13 36.27 3.18 26.58 225486.39 Phillips66♦ 60.88 0.13 118.96 40.04 6.33 -20.46 26592.4
Vinci 86.80 -0.44 107.35 54.76 2.39 29.90 63052.45
CanNatRy 142.10 -0.56 149.11 92.01 1.61 27.36 77262.1 ShnEtsuCh 15065 -75.00 15565 8751 1.50 20.31 60417.01 TaiwanSem 490.00 -9.00 506.00 235.50 2.00 26.51 445734.69 Cognizant 75.34 0.64 78.47 40.01 1.19 23.78 40279.86 PhilMorris 76.70 -0.77 90.17 56.01 6.53 15.35 119446.13
Vivendi 25.50 -0.14 26.65 16.60 2.39 16.54 35803.14
Enbridge 37.82 -0.27 57.32 33.06 8.42 39.13 58525.9 Softbank 6577 -62.00 7300 2609.5 0.69 -8.19 132294.23 Thailand (THB) ColgtPlm 85.18 0.57 86.06 58.49 2.17 26.62 73013.64 PNCFin 128.40 -0.90 161.79 79.41 3.83 18.66 54403.21
GtWesLif 29.94 -0.37 35.60 18.88 5.85 11.05 21223.26 Germany (€)
Sony 9249 12.00 9545 0.00 0.50 16.97 112262.69 PTT Explor 37.75 -0.25 47.75 23.60 5.58 21.73 35465.82 Comcast 49.44 0.30 50.38 31.71 1.91 18.55 225714.22 PPG Inds♦ 142.68 -0.13 149.34 69.77 1.48 30.73 33700.47
ImpOil 22.26 -0.25 35.80 10.27 4.07-541.04 12483.29 Allianz 194.84 -3.96 232.60 117.10 5.00 11.98 96238.36
SumitomoF 3174 15.00 4145 2507.5 6.14 20.03 41977.02 United Arab Emirates (Dhs) ConocPhil♦ 38.59 -0.59 67.13 20.84 4.34 17.57 41397.1 Praxair 164.50 -0.99 169.75 140.00 2.34 37.33 47306.22
Manulife 21.48 -0.32 27.78 12.58 5.07 10.66 31838.86 BASF 57.78 -0.93 70.89 37.36 5.80 49.60 62834.86
Takeda Ph 3625 -16.00 4543 2894.5 5.12 46.01 55001.75 Emirtestele 16.96 -0.08 17.26 11.04 4.82 16.10 40155.44 Corning♦ 35.95 -0.14 37.13 17.44 2.50 239.96 27466.16 ProctGmbl 139.38 -0.33 146.92 94.34 2.26 26.05 345595.07
Nutrien 58.46 0.44 64.58 34.80 4.31 28.59 25423.91 Bayer 46.40 -1.08 78.34 39.91 6.13 -6.16 53966.5
TokioMarine 5594 54.00 6317 4167 3.50 15.42 37797.66 United Kingdom (p) Costco 383.28 1.05 389.50 271.28 0.70 43.03 169113.88 Prudntl 74.62 -1.15 97.24 38.62 6.02-112.46 29549.52
RylBkC♦ 103.27 -0.81 109.68 72.00 4.06 13.49 112357.42 BMW 74.00 0.13 77.06 36.60 3.43 14.88 52744.7
Toyota 7301 -18.00 8026 0.00 3.11 12.42 229300.2 CrownCstl 168.46 -2.19 180.00 114.18 3.00 90.47 72656.44 PublStor 228.30 -1.67 240.75 155.37 3.75 30.48 39911.02
Suncor En 19.96 -0.15 45.12 14.02 7.80 -5.51 23261.26 Continental 110.50 -2.00 125.92 51.45 - -7.96 26167.32 AscBrFd 1999.5 -33.50 2730 1554 2.32 22.37 20931.33
Mexico (Mex$) CSX 90.81 -0.52 93.71 46.81 1.15 24.66 69449.21 Qualcomm 146.83 -0.22 153.33 58.00 1.83 57.89 166064.73
ThmReut 104.95 -0.13 115.66 75.91 1.98 23.94 39853.88 Daimler 55.07 -0.63 55.96 21.02 - -193.74 69756.86 AstraZen 8125 -55.00 10120 5871 2.74 61.22 136062.96
AmerMvl 14.11 -0.42 16.82 12.33 2.39 14.12 32082.19 CVS 65.33 -1.02 77.03 52.04 3.28 9.70 85506.87 Raytheon 116.96 -5.47 233.48 103.00 2.98 10.60 32566.46
TntoDom 68.33 0.03 77.72 49.01 4.41 13.45 94716.63 Deut Bank 8.99 -0.12 10.37 4.45 - -6.97 22001.63 Aviva 315.00 -4.30 430.20 205.70 3.02 5.74 16716.07
FEMSA UBD 151.54 -0.63 185.00 112.72 0.89 98.68 16223.16 Danaher 226.09 1.39 248.32 119.60 0.32 51.65 160605.69 Regen Pharm 519.47 0.43 664.64 328.13 - 18.81 54470.22
TrnCan 54.94 0.23 76.58 47.05 5.46 12.73 39460.61 Deut Tlkm 14.85 -0.07 16.75 10.41 4.10 18.75 83718.35 Barclays 138.94 -2.66 192.99 73.04 - 12.09 31349.55
WalMrtMex 56.73 -0.74 62.71 47.76 0.91 33.14 49069.16 Deere 257.13 -0.21 265.87 106.14 1.19 29.75 80576.49 S&P Global 338.93 2.45 379.87 186.06 0.78 29.85 81545.36
ValeantPh 30.80 -1.06 36.02 14.01 - -3.78 8158.48 DeutsPost 39.10 0.16 43.50 19.11 - 21.52 57243.65 BP 243.75 -8.20 510.40 188.52 13.65 -2.77 64238.5
Delphi 17.02 0.31 18.51 5.39 - -7.42 1469.67 Salesforce 264.79 7.63 284.50 115.29 - 105.13 238575.79
E.ON 9.05 -0.08 11.56 7.60 5.16 28.76 28302.42 Netherlands (€) BrAmTob 2780 -95.00 3507 2362.5 5.54 10.04 68536.9
China (HK$) Delta 37.65 -0.26 62.48 17.51 2.19 -2.22 24010.7 Schlmbrg 19.86 -0.12 41.14 11.87 6.44 -2.55 27638.76
Fresenius Med 71.24 0.02 81.10 53.50 - 16.02 25678.83 Altice 4.32 0.02 6.86 2.26 - -3.85 5481.81 BSkyB 1727.5 1.50 1740 893.50 0.76 36.60 38843.72
AgricBkCh 2.82 -0.05 3.50 2.38 7.58 4.37 11179.4 Devon Energy 12.98 0.22 26.98 4.70 3.13 -2.03 4962.94 Sempra Energy 130.47 -2.57 161.87 88.00 3.30 16.79 37636.71
Fresenius SE 37.64 -0.36 51.54 24.25 - 11.30 20147.9 ASML Hld 355.45 -2.20 360.00 177.52 0.68 44.14 179141.05 BT 128.00 -2.30 209.20 1.02 12.03 5.87 16793.21
Bk China 2.71 -0.05 3.39 2.33 8.29 4.20 29225.99 DiscFinServ♦ 75.84 -0.24 87.43 23.25 2.48 22.36 23244.68 Shrwin-Will♦ 728.14 4.53 758.00 325.43 0.73 35.68 66132.96
HenkelKgaA 78.15 -1.35 89.10 54.65 2.38 18.91 24038.94 Heineken 90.20 -1.80 105.00 68.82 1.89 55.19 61515.57 Compass 1350 4.00 2076 865.80 2.96 20.80 29357.57
BkofComm 4.18 -0.05 5.68 3.66 8.86 3.87 18874.2 Disney 142.04 -1.86 153.41 79.07 0.66-152.56 256668.59 SimonProp 79.65 3.04 153.49 42.25 8.46 13.08 24368.55
Linde 211.60 -1.70 226.40 130.45 1.57 55.74 131495.37 ING 7.70 -0.12 11.26 4.23 3.17 10.68 35543.12 Diageo 2979.5 2.50 3297 2050.6 2.35 49.74 99181.89
BOE Tech 0.61 0.01 0.80 0.47 - -4.13 15.65 DominRes 79.87 -1.34 90.89 57.79 4.98 114.82 65159.47 SouthCpr 55.68 -0.19 56.98 23.43 2.69 34.46 43044.72
MuenchRkv 236.10 -8.20 284.20 141.10 4.21 17.28 39163.8 Unilever 49.55 -0.77 55.39 38.42 3.36 21.79 85696.51 GlaxoSmh 1395 20.20 1857 1284 5.73 10.50 90714.96
Ch Coms Cons 4.20 -0.09 6.63 3.97 6.51 3.81 2393.31 DowDupont 30.52 -0.65 48.38 30.06 4.01 -8.62 68559.76 Starbucks♦ 97.46 -0.45 99.33 50.02 1.75 81.31 113930.74
SAP 99.42 -0.58 143.32 82.13 1.61 25.64 144612.05 Norway (Kr) Glencore 190.44 -3.42 252.90 109.76 4.19 -9.41 36324.09
Ch Evrbrght 3.01 0.01 3.97 2.40 8.32 4.50 4921.76 DukeEner♦ 91.21 -0.32 103.79 62.13 4.44 30.22 67126.78 StateSt 68.85 -0.33 85.89 42.10 3.23 10.29 24290.12
Siemens 109.80 -1.32 119.30 53.02 3.61 19.11 110503.32 DNB 157.10 -2.85 178.10 94.26 - 12.46 26950.63 HSBC 383.85 -0.95 602.90 281.50 4.19-237.09 101767.25
Ch Rail Cons 5.39 -0.16 9.99 4.90 4.57 3.51 1443.3 Eaton 117.14 0.39 119.48 56.42 2.63 29.42 46690.41 Stryker 230.57 -1.20 241.53 124.54 1.04 51.18 86644.17
Volkswgn 161.70 - 185.00 99.16 - 15.21 56496.08 Equinor♦ 136.65 -2.65 187.20 95.20 7.41 -20.18 49258.13 Imperial Brands 1505 -42.00 2072 1203 13.73 16.67 18979.9
Ch Rail Gp 3.93 -0.05 5.05 3.45 3.83 3.43 2132.47 eBay 49.54 1.01 61.06 26.02 1.30 16.89 34149.83 Sychrony Fin 29.83 -0.25 38.18 12.15 3.02 13.26 17414.17
Hong Kong (HK$) Telenor 151.75 -0.85 171.90 130.75 5.47 19.72 23498.9 LlydsBkg 35.66 -0.01 73.66 23.59 3.14 89.14 33978.22
ChConstBk 5.95 -0.08 6.85 4.93 6.31 5.18 184484.23 Ecolab 210.65 1.21 231.36 124.60 0.95 41.44 60127.6 T-MobileUS 129.56 1.71 132.33 63.50 - 46.92 160808.16
AIA 88.20 -1.65 90.90 60.05 1.53 23.58 137565.89 Natl Grid 933.00 -9.00 1073.8 789.13 5.13 25.49 41410.08
China Vanke 29.05 0.10 34.75 21.65 4.24 7.04 7094.09 Qatar (QR) Emerson 76.58 -0.31 78.38 37.75 2.78 22.36 45763.59 Target♦ 172.99 6.14 173.44 90.17 1.54 24.85 86601.88
BOC Hold 24.60 0.15 28.90 20.05 6.69 8.06 33542.99 Natwest Group 156.40 -1.40 265.00 90.54 1.28 47.39 24746.51
ChinaCitic 3.33 -0.06 4.78 2.93 8.48 3.46 6391.29 QatarNtBk 18.00 -0.68 21.25 15.71 3.41 13.86 45662.13 EOG Res 44.35 -0.58 89.54 27.00 2.99 69.07 25872.83 TE Connect 110.78 0.95 114.42 48.62 1.80-304.46 36639.66
Ch OSLnd&Inv 19.00 -0.38 31.00 18.84 5.74 4.35 26843.9 Prudential 1278.5 -21.00 1509 682.80 2.90 31.47 43739.48
ChinaLife 17.66 -0.34 22.90 11.64 4.86 8.36 16947.65 Russia (RUB) EquityResTP 58.74 -1.23 87.57 45.43 4.26 18.17 21864.29 Tesla Mtrs 499.75 13.11 508.61 65.42 - 1127.98 473713.39
ChngKng 43.70 - 57.20 33.40 5.15 7.41 20815.42 ReckittB 6728 22.00 8191.3 5130 2.60 -17.40 62648.96
ChinaMBank 50.45 -0.50 50.95 29.80 2.79 12.01 29870.05 Gzprm neft 185.71 -3.02 272.68 158.17 9.34 10.45 58976.64 Exelon 41.89 -0.81 50.54 29.28 3.81 14.44 40866.73 TexasInstr 156.02 2.47 164.63 93.09 2.36 28.84 143217.33
Citic Ltd 6.16 -0.09 10.60 5.51 8.08 3.53 23110.18 RELX 1776.5 43.50 1613685 1382.86 2.57 27.08 45383.51
ChinaMob 47.10 0.05 70.00 45.20 7.42 7.78 124374.64 Lukoil 4745.5 -157.00 6810 3663 7.64 12.47 44107.51 ExpScripts 92.33 -3.47 101.73 66.93 - 11.10 52061.19 TheTrvelers 133.11 -1.26 141.87 76.99 2.57 14.89 33717.83
Citic Secs 17.00 -0.26 21.45 12.60 3.45 12.28 4995.07 RioTinto 4716 -81.50 5175 2954 6.48 13.22 83637.65
ChinaPcIns 27.55 -0.65 32.50 17.90 5.16 8.27 9860.72 MmcNrlskNckl 20150 -66.00 23656 13352 11.57 14.96 42774.79 ExxonMb 37.11 -0.10 71.37 30.11 10.04 20.64 156909.77 ThrmoFshr 454.84 0.66 532.57 250.21 0.19 46.00 180267.12
CK Hutchison 58.05 0.30 76.00 45.05 5.85 6.06 28869.79 RollsRoyce 98.56 -4.04 256.07 0.54 4.67 -0.33 2423.86
ChMinsheng 4.34 -0.04 6.06 3.85 10.01 3.33 4656.95 Novatek 973.20 -3.20 1382.2 682.80 3.47 6.59 39639.58 Facebook 271.67 -0.30 304.67 137.10 - 31.03 653086.25 TimeWrnr 98.77 0.82 103.89 85.88 1.54 15.09 77269.69
CNOOC 8.86 -0.02 14.04 6.24 9.46 8.21 51015.97 RylDShlA 1226 -32.00 2338.59 878.10 10.22 -10.24 74525.83
ChMrchSecs 22.36 0.53 26.04 13.10 0.98 22.88 25201.71 Rosneft 324.00 -11.00 489.90 229.80 10.77 12.36 46063.6 Fedex 278.62 -3.88 293.30 88.69 1.00 53.16 73163.38 TJX Cos 61.06 -1.22 65.14 32.72 1.14 108.23 73145.85
HangSeng 132.60 2.40 173.80 110.00 6.38 11.87 32694.35 Shire# 4690 111.00 4780 2944 0.58 11.63 56567.13
Chna Utd Coms 4.82 -0.01 6.24 4.66 1.24 27.69 22352.06 Sberbank 188.91 -2.03 270.80 172.15 - 5.33 54705 FordMtr 8.79 -0.03 9.58 3.96 5.48 -15.22 34363.22 UnionPac 201.92 -2.11 210.95 105.08 1.97 25.15 136067.6
HK Exc&Clr 370.40 0.40 397.80 206.00 1.94 46.38 60563.56 StandCh 438.60 -5.50 739.40 334.25 1.29 12.21 19119.98
ChShenEgy 14.48 -0.30 16.88 11.94 10.30 6.19 6346.65 Surgutneftegas 35.13 -0.76 54.89 24.06 1.93 2.10 16833.73 Franklin 20.55 -0.77 28.00 14.91 4.17 9.37 10176.97 UPS B 166.11 -2.34 178.01 82.00 2.54 30.86 118804.62
MTR 42.85 0.35 47.80 36.20 3.07 40.43 34153.87 Tesco♦ 236.10 2.90 260.40 202.00 3.88 22.32 25561.56
ChShpbldng 4.32 0.04 5.60 3.98 0.21-155.04 11994.79 GenDyn 150.09 -3.41 190.08 100.55 3.02 12.46 43073 USBancorp 42.58 -0.69 61.11 28.36 4.22 12.51 64136.61
SandsCh 34.05 - 45.45 25.15 3.11 132.79 35525.18 Saudi Arabia (SR) Vodafone 121.66 -1.34 160.44 92.76 6.30 -43.92 42910.42
ChStConEng 5.31 - 6.20 4.76 3.47 5.50 33265.67 GenElectric 9.65 -0.08 13.26 5.48 0.44 23.73 84532.77 UtdHlthcre 335.40 -9.11 367.95 187.72 1.43 17.62 318234.47
SHK Props 106.60 -0.10 124.00 87.60 4.97 12.26 39838.19 AlRajhiBnk 73.70 -0.50 74.40 51.00 4.36 17.44 49128.1 WPP 740.80 -7.80 1085.5 450.00 3.06 -3.98 12402.28
ChUncHK 4.83 -0.01 7.45 3.84 3.60 10.30 19059.88 GenMills 61.33 0.20 66.14 46.59 3.16 16.60 37490.05 UtdTech♦ 86.01 -5.36 158.44 69.02 3.12 60.04 74498.84
Tencent 573.00 -16.00 633.00 325.20 0.23 45.56 708290.43 Natnlcombnk 43.10 -0.30 50.70 30.50 5.71 11.54 34476.33 United States of America ($)
CNNC Intl 4.68 -0.02 5.19 4.02 2.55 15.15 11062.37 GenMotors 42.69 -0.03 44.13 14.33 2.86 37.99 61102.52 ValeroEngy 50.51 -0.74 100.16 31.00 7.97 18.44 20597.43
SaudiBasic 96.40 -1.40 100.00 61.90 4.88 -88.33 77111.76 21stC Fox A 27.55 -0.11 39.74 19.81 1.79 15.89 9333.52
CSR 3.21 -0.07 6.10 2.95 5.48 7.40 1809.53 India (Rs) GileadSci 60.26 -0.65 85.97 57.04 4.65-268.11 75531.34 Verizon 60.04 -0.29 62.22 48.84 4.39 12.14 248430.5
SaudiTelec 107.20 -0.80 108.80 72.30 3.99 18.73 57167.24 3M 169.72 -0.22 182.55 114.04 3.67 18.00 97895.33
Daqin 6.60 -0.02 8.26 6.32 7.24 8.72 14900.39 Bhartiartl 468.55 -9.85 612.00 361.75 - -5.15 34417.69 GoldmSchs 223.45 -0.85 250.46 130.85 2.39 15.85 76883.05 VertexPharm 215.46 -0.90 306.08 197.47 - 25.45 56026.46
Gree Elec Apl 0.10 0.00 0.28 0.07 - -0.04 4.48 HDFC Bk 1374.35 -34.35 1419 738.75 - 25.98 101873.33 Singapore (S$) AbbottLb 109.92 0.15 115.14 61.61 1.32 59.72 194817.98 Halliburton 15.38 -0.01 25.47 4.25 2.99 -3.03 13596.03 VF Cp 84.51 -1.05 100.25 45.07 2.37 112.81 32959.26
GuosenSec 13.57 0.05 16.14 10.38 1.47 22.70 16897.82 Hind Unilevr 2130.75 -1.35 2614.3 1757.3 1.24 65.27 67406.98 DBS 24.42 -0.21 26.47 16.65 5.33 13.14 46123.45 Abbvie 99.04 0.32 101.28 62.55 4.86 20.25 174852.54 HCA Hold 149.17 -2.07 155.84 58.38 0.88 14.38 50475.35 ViacomCBS 32.91 0.21 43.04 10.10 2.93 14.17 18593.48
HaitongSecs♦ 6.46 -0.36 9.58 5.79 - 6.64 2840.58 HsngDevFin 2324.6 -40.30 2499.9 1473.45 0.79 17.51 56288.58 JardnMt US$ 51.22 -0.49 58.95 37.37 3.59 -92.04 37243.83 Accenture 241.23 1.50 248.00 137.15 1.06 29.52 158942.35 Hew-Pack 20.24 -0.22 23.93 12.54 3.43 11.28 27792.71 Visa Inc 207.45 -0.38 217.65 133.93 0.59 36.85 349762.18
Hngzh HikVDT 48.10 2.25 50.07 27.00 1.44 34.94 59131.74 ICICI Bk 478.75 -18.90 552.20 268.30 0.22 29.38 44464.55 JardnStr US$ 24.47 -0.12 33.50 17.81 1.55 -28.94 27122.75 Adobe 470.30 10.83 536.88 255.13 - 59.98 225612.99 HiltonWwde 102.82 -0.53 116.73 44.30 0.47 739.08 28527.03 Walgreen 37.21 -1.03 62.16 33.36 4.88 72.45 32216.39
Hunng Pwr 3.14 -0.01 4.24 2.24 5.15 24.34 1903.42 Infosys 1096.75 -13.80 1186 509.25 1.65 24.89 62899.03 OCBC 9.79 -0.11 11.23 7.80 5.59 10.90 32544.19 AEP♦ 82.71 -1.42 104.97 65.14 3.46 20.95 41056.2 HomeDep 269.26 -0.57 292.95 140.63 2.14 24.45 289846.41 WalMartSto 151.45 2.36 153.40 102.00 1.42 23.98 429157.71
IM Baotou Stl 1.19 -0.01 1.39 1.04 0.59-132.68 5724.39 ITC 187.90 3.85 252.65 134.60 5.69 15.17 31131.25 SingTel 2.39 0.04 3.48 2.00 7.38 36.15 29005.32 Aetna - - - - - - - Honywell♦ 201.05 -0.06 210.00 101.08 1.87 23.11 141073.92 WellsFargo 25.71 0.65 54.75 20.76 8.49 26.69 106278.71
In&CmBkCh 4.60 -0.11 6.11 3.96 6.71 4.84 51490.57 L&T 1134.25 -13.90 1417.9 661.00 2.60 19.34 21444.21 UOB 22.41 0.09 27.00 17.28 5.07 12.41 27861.6 Aflac 43.05 0.19 55.07 23.07 2.73 10.06 30240.27 HumanaInc 412.92 -5.53 474.70 208.25 0.61 14.67 54645.77 Williams Cos 19.75 -0.25 24.17 8.41 8.45 167.77 23968.32
IndstrlBk 19.33 0.13 20.42 14.93 - 6.71 57578.8 OilNatGas 72.15 0.20 135.25 50.00 8.39 20.22 12221.24 South Africa (R) AirProd 270.45 2.75 327.89 167.43 1.98 29.32 59740.88 IBM 116.46 -0.31 158.75 90.56 5.96 12.34 103772.51 Yum!Brnds 104.63 0.46 107.62 54.95 1.82 29.36 31563.54
Kweichow 1720.19 26.54 1828 960.10 0.99 49.46 328149.79 RelianceIn 1973.15 -14.05 2369.35 867.40 0.69 28.15 179648.74 Firstrand 47.16 -0.21 67.88 31.13 6.03 16.27 17065.24 Alexion 122.27 -1.20 128.57 72.67 - 30.47 26758.23 IllinoisTool 203.95 -2.15 224.69 115.94 2.25 28.03 64554.31 Venezuela (VEF)
Midea 0.65 0.01 1.17 0.58 - -1.69 18.03 SBI NewA 239.75 -12.25 351.00 149.45 - 9.42 28809.45 MTN Grp 66.80 -0.71 96.83 26.25 7.86 7.67 8119.6 Allergan 193.02 0.03 202.22 114.27 1.54 -25.19 63659.11 Illumina 299.53 4.30 404.20 196.78 - 59.93 43731.38 Bco de Vnzla 17500 500.00 17500 875.00 654.75 - 121.16
New Ch Life Ins 32.20 -0.65 37.30 20.45 2.81 7.00 4294.36 SunPhrmInds 507.35 -5.65 564.75 312.00 1.19 159.60 16390.24 Naspers N 3041.25 -55.44 3499.45 1843.8 0.26 26.32 85441.01 Allstate 99.80 -0.28 125.92 64.13 2.23 7.02 30344.47 Intcntl Exch 101.46 2.00 106.99 63.51 1.21 24.50 56945.05 Bco Provncl 740000 20000 787000 91000 - -14.21 151.46
PetroChina 2.52 -0.01 4.23 2.16 5.26 -31.15 6857.14 Tata Cons 2636.9 10.25 2885 1506.05 1.29 31.35 133225.57 Alphabet 1748.88 8.24 1816.89 1008.87 - 35.96 525788.48 Intel♦ 45.17 0.11 69.29 43.61 3.06 7.79 185110.76
South Korea (KRW) Mrcntl Srvcs 790000 - 850000 94000 0.02 10.20 91.29
PingAnIns 88.90 -0.35 101.00 69.00 2.74 11.19 85387.36 Altria 39.49 -0.68 51.78 30.95 9.11 -76.88 73388.97 Intuit 360.19 5.45 377.15 187.68 0.59 51.66 94299.03
Indonesia (Rp) HyundMobis 243000-2000.00 268500 126000 1.23 13.17 20703.89
PngAnBnk 18.85 0.39 18.98 11.91 - 15.37 55549.36 Amazon 3114.25 8.79 3552.25 1626.03 - 111.841562578.62 John&John 146.09 -1.28 157.00 109.16 2.74 22.46 384588.16
Bk Cent Asia 22300 200.00 24700 16800 - - 38879.26 KoreaElePwr 21050 -350.00 29500 15550 - -14.78 12112.53 Closing prices and highs & lows are in traded currency (with variations for that
Pwr Cons Corp 4.06 -0.01 4.88 3.40 3.38 8.98 6870.97 AmerAir 12.68 -0.06 30.78 8.25 1.61 -0.90 6448.79 JohnsonCn 45.42 -0.54 47.58 22.78 2.45 43.75 32879.89
Israel (ILS) SK Hynix 98200 200.00 106000 65800 1.01 29.61 64079.09 country indicated by stock), market capitalisation is in USD. Highs & lows are
SaicMtr 26.01 0.36 28.80 16.90 8.20 15.08 46147.68 AmerExpr 113.75 -0.49 138.13 67.00 1.62 22.01 91591.72 JPMrgnCh 114.57 -0.68 141.10 76.91 3.36 14.41 349232.62
TevaPha 32.84 0.91 46.45 24.30 - 911.31 10748.93 SmsungEl 64600 -200.00 67000 42300 2.18 20.36 345671.07 based on intraday trading over a rolling 52 week period.
ShenwanHong 0.05 0.00 0.11 0.03 - -0.17 55.36 AmerIntGrp 37.92 -0.63 56.42 16.07 3.61 -6.55 32669.06 Kimb-Clark 141.29 0.23 160.16 110.66 3.07 20.05 48057.92
Italy (€) Spain (€) AmerTower 235.48 -2.22 272.20 174.32 1.88 51.05 104603.36 ♦ ex-dividend
ShgPdgBk 9.74 0.04 12.69 9.22 - 5.65 43414.74 KinderM 13.95 0.19 22.58 9.42 7.77 186.23 31579.93 ■ ex-capital redistribution
Enel 8.16 0.04 8.61 5.15 3.73 44.68 98273.47 BBVA 3.57 0.06 5.34 2.13 7.39 -50.27 28200.29 Amgen♦ 224.25 -3.51 264.97 177.05 2.91 17.11 130551.31
Sinopec Corp 3.54 -0.04 4.85 2.95 10.39 86.32 11647.91 Kraft Heinz 31.46 -0.17 36.37 19.99 5.44-183.72 38461.47 # price at time of suspension
ENI 8.08 -0.12 14.42 5.73 10.81 -3.27 34754.51 BcoSantdr 2.32 -0.04 3.96 1.50 4.37 -4.68 45736.71 Anadarko 72.77 0.56 76.23 40.40 1.50 -63.37 36563.54
Sinopec Oil 1.84 -0.02 2.59 1.67 - 49.96 3364.96 Kroger♦ 32.81 0.77 37.22 26.25 1.97 9.93 25401.73
Generali 14.07 -0.16 19.00 10.20 3.61 11.95 26255.4 CaixaBnk 2.19 -0.04 2.94 1.50 3.25 11.52 15502.63 Anthem 313.09 -9.30 338.20 171.03 1.20 12.70 77865.59
Denmark (kr) Iberdrola 11.36 0.03 11.57 7.76 3.57 20.29 85410.29 L Brands 38.66 5.05 39.95 8.00 2.35 -13.42 10690.78
IntSPaolo 1.85 -0.02 2.63 1.31 - 9.64 42657.25 Aon Cp 202.30 -1.06 238.19 143.93 0.93 25.14 46249.09 LasVegasSd 58.36 1.03 74.29 33.30 4.27 123.93 44573.19
DanskeBk 102.55 -2.70 123.60 68.04 - 9.55 14047.61 Inditex 26.97 -0.36 32.28 18.51 0.82 45.85 99522.96
Unicred 8.40 -0.10 14.44 6.01 - -8.86 22215.04 Apple 118.14 0.11 137.98 53.15 0.71 33.482008507.88 LibertyGbl 23.21 0.40 24.13 15.24 - -39.43 4208.27
MollerMrsk 11385 -40.00 11750 4976 1.31 32.50 17061.94 Repsol 7.75 -0.19 14.76 5.04 12.00 -1.59 14916.03 ArcherDan 48.22 -1.05 52.05 28.92 3.15 14.35 26829.08 Lilly (E)♦ 141.01 0.84 170.75 113.29 2.10 21.50 134887.57
NovoB 421.95 1.75 467.90 331.70 2.01 23.66 121512.42 Telefonica 3.46 -0.11 7.01 2.71 11.52-170.61 21854.05

FT 500: TOP 20 FT 500: BOTTOM 20 BONDS: HIGH YIELD & EMERGING MARKET BONDS: GLOBAL INVESTMENT GRADE
Close Prev Day Week Month Close Prev Day Week Month Day's Mth's Spread Day's Mth's Spread
price price change change % change change % change % price price change change % change change % change % Red Ratings Bid Bid chge chge vs Red Ratings Bid Bid chge chge vs
Tesla Mtrs 499.75 486.64 13.11 2.69 87.99 21.4 15.96 Ch OSLnd&Inv 19.00 19.38 -0.38 -1.96 -2.85 -13.0 -2.96 Nov 19 date Coupon S* M* F* price yield yield yield US Nov 19 date Coupon S* M* F* price yield yield yield US
Carnival 17.84 17.59 0.25 1.45 2.91 19.5 26.08 ChUncHK 4.83 4.84 -0.01 -0.21 -0.72 -13.0 -9.19 High Yield US$ US$
L Brands 38.66 33.61 5.05 15.03 5.60 16.9 16.66 ChinaMob 47.10 47.05 0.05 0.11 -6.85 -12.7 -5.30 HCA Inc. 04/24 8.36 BB- Ba2 BB 113.75 4.24 0.00 0.12 - FleetBoston Financial Corp. 01/28 6.88 BBB+ Baa1 A- 129.00 2.54 -0.01 -0.05 -
Boeing 204.44 203.30 1.14 0.56 27.72 15.7 22.57 Ch Rail Cons 5.39 5.55 -0.16 -2.88 -0.63 -10.5 6.51 High Yield Euro The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. 02/28 5.00 BBB+ A3 A 117.21 2.47 0.00 0.32 -
Devon Energy 12.98 12.76 0.22 1.68 1.76 15.6 46.22 Ch Coms Cons 4.20 4.29 -0.09 -2.10 -0.44 -9.5 3.44 Aldesa Financial Services S.A. 04/21 7.25 - - B 71.10 28.23 0.00 0.64 25.98 NationsBank Corp. 03/28 6.80 BBB+ Baa1 A- 127.69 2.72 -0.01 0.06 -
BBVA 3.57 3.51 0.06 1.74 0.48 15.6 51.61 Walgreen 37.21 38.23 -1.03 -2.68 -3.57 -8.7 0.30 GTE LLC 04/28 6.94 BBB+ Baa2 A- 128.27 2.80 0.00 -0.11 -
SimonProp 79.65 76.61 3.04 3.97 10.51 15.2 24.59 AEP 82.71 84.13 -1.42 -1.69 -6.93 -7.7 -9.67 Emerging US$ United Utilities PLC 08/28 6.88 BBB Baa1 A- 130.43 2.62 -0.07 -0.22 -
Schlmbrg 19.86 19.97 -0.12 -0.58 2.56 14.8 32.25 HaitongSecs 6.46 6.82 -0.36 -5.28 -0.52 -7.4 -4.85 Peru 03/19 7.13 BBB+ A3 BBB+ 104.40 2.60 - - 0.34 Barclays Bank plc 01/29 4.50 A A1 A+ 96.46 5.02 0.00 0.02 -
Occid Pet 12.96 12.87 0.09 0.70 1.65 14.6 31.53 CardinalHlth 51.93 53.32 -1.39 -2.61 -4.07 -7.3 8.33 Colombia 01/26 4.50 - Baa2 BBB- 112.25 1.89 -0.05 -0.11 1.54
Brazil 04/26 6.00 - Ba2 BB- 118.50 2.32 -0.03 -0.15 1.97 Euro
Renault 31.15 31.37 -0.23 -0.72 3.70 13.5 30.83 CSR 3.21 3.28 -0.07 -2.13 -0.25 -7.2 0.63 Electricite de France (EDF) 04/30 4.63 A- A3 A- 137.45 0.82 -0.01 0.10 -
ConocPhil 38.59 39.18 -0.59 -1.51 4.58 13.5 17.81 Cigna 204.82 210.93 -6.12 -2.90 -15.34 -7.0 19.27 Poland 04/26 3.25 - A2 A- 112.78 0.82 0.00 -0.03 0.47
Mexico 05/26 11.50 - Baa1 BBB- 147.50 2.25 0.00 -0.03 1.90 The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. 02/31 3.00 BBB+ A3 A 124.42 0.68 0.00 -0.11 -
Nissan Mt 477.00 481.70 -4.70 -0.98 55.80 13.2 28.50 Regen Pharm 519.47 519.04 0.43 0.08 -37.31 -6.7 -11.06 The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. 02/31 3.00 BBB+ A3 A 121.70 0.93 0.00 0.02 -
SK Hynix 98200.00 98000.00 200.00 0.20 11200.00 12.9 15.12 ThrmoFshr 454.84 454.18 0.66 0.14 -31.73 -6.5 -1.49 Turkey 10/26 4.88 - B2 BB- 97.28 5.42 -0.13 -1.11 5.07
Turkey 03/27 6.00 - Ba2 BB+ 101.26 5.82 0.00 0.17 3.07 Finland 04/31 0.75 AA+ Aa1 AA+ 111.08 -0.27 0.00 -0.05 -0.87
ViacomCBS 32.91 32.70 0.21 0.64 3.66 12.5 21.34 Unilever 49.55 50.32 -0.77 -1.53 -3.41 -6.4 -5.00
Peru 08/27 4.13 BBB+ A3 BBB+ 103.50 3.66 0.01 -0.02 0.80 Yen
LibertyGbl 23.21 22.81 0.40 1.75 2.45 11.8 9.12 Citic Ltd 6.16 6.25 -0.09 -1.44 -0.42 -6.4 5.82
Russia 06/28 12.75 - Baa3 BBB 171.00 2.45 0.00 0.01 - Mexico 06/26 1.09 - Baa1 BBB- 96.45 1.76 0.00 -0.08 1.41
Imperial Brands 1505.00 1547.00 -42.00 -2.71 157.00 11.6 -98.82 AstraZen 8125.00 8180.00 -55.00 -0.67 -535.00 -6.2 -88.33
Brookfield 52.74 53.45 -0.71 -1.33 5.42 11.5 18.77 In&CmBkCh 4.60 4.71 -0.11 -2.34 -0.29 -5.9 4.30 Brazil 02/47 5.63 - Ba2 BB- 116.85 4.52 -0.03 -0.19 - £ Sterling
Marathon Ptl 38.64 38.54 0.10 0.26 3.94 11.4 36.46 CVS 65.33 66.35 -1.02 -1.54 -4.06 -5.9 11.05 Emerging Euro innogy Fin B.V. 06/30 6.25 BBB Baa2 A- 137.45 2.19 -0.03 0.02 -
Suncor En 19.96 20.11 -0.15 -0.75 2.00 11.1 28.21 ShenwanHong 0.05 0.05 0.00 -2.00 0.00 -5.8 11.36 Brazil 04/21 2.88 BB- Ba2 BB- 103.09 0.05 0.01 -0.09 -1.19 innogy Fin B.V. 06/30 6.25 BBB Baa2 A- 128.68 3.20 0.00 -0.01 0.40
Phillips66 60.88 60.75 0.13 0.21 6.03 11.0 24.09 Lowes 149.16 146.74 2.42 1.65 -8.82 -5.6 -14.80 Mexico 04/23 2.75 BBB+ A3 BBB+ 107.76 0.76 0.00 -0.07 -1.56 Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data LLC, an ICE Data Services company. US $ denominated bonds NY close; all other London
Mexico 04/23 2.75 - Baa1 BBB- 106.03 0.25 0.00 -0.18 0.09 close. *S - Standard & Poor’s, M - Moody’s, F - Fitch.
Based on the FT Global 500 companies in local currency Based on the FT Global 500 companies in local currency
Bulgaria 03/28 3.00 BBB- Baa2 BBB 117.04 1.00 0.02 -0.15 -1.42
Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data LLC, an ICE Data Services company. US $ denominated bonds NY close; all
other London close. *S - Standard & Poor’s, M - Moody’s, F - Fitch.

INTEREST RATES: OFFICIAL BOND INDICES VOLATILITY INDICES GILTS: UK CASH MARKET
Nov 19 Rate Current Since Last Mnth Ago Year Ago Day's Month's Year Return Return Nov 19 Day Chng Prev 52 wk high 52 wk low Red Change in Yield 52 Week Amnt
US Fed Funds 0.00-0.25 15-03-2020 1.00-1.25 1.50-1.75 1.25-1.50 Index change change change 1 month 1 year VIX 23.14 -0.70 23.84 85.42 11.42 Nov 19 Price £ Yield Day Week Month Year High Low £m
US Prime 4.75 30-10-2019 5.25 5.25 4.25 Markit IBoxx VXD 22.89 -0.58 23.47 71.05 2.47 - - - - - - - - -
US Discount 2.65 30-09-2019 2.75 2.75 1.75 ABF Pan-Asia unhedged 223.65 0.22 2.08 7.75 2.55 9.53 VXN 27.61 0.14 27.47 84.67 13.58 - - - - - - - - -
Euro Repo 0.00 16-03-2016 0.00 0.00 0.00 Corporates( £) 398.09 0.04 1.03 5.78 0.50 6.42 VDAX 23.31 0.42 22.89 93.30 - - - - - - - - - -
UK Repo 0.10 19-03-2020 0.25 0.75 0.25 Corporates($) 336.75 0.30 1.58 8.08 1.58 8.08 † CBOE. VIX: S&P 500 index Options Volatility, VXD: DJIA Index Options Volatility, VXN: NASDAQ Index Options Volatility. - - - - - - - - -
Japan O'night Call 0.00-0.10 01-02-2016 0.00 0.00--0.10 0.00--0.10 Corporates(€) 243.30 0.01 0.82 2.37 0.71 2.31 ‡ Deutsche Borse. VDAX: DAX Index Options Volatility. Tr 1.5pc '21 100.27 -0.05 -16.67 25.00 66.67 -107.35 101.22 100.27 32.84
Switzerland Libor Target -1.25-0.25 15-01-2015 -0.75--0.25 -1.25--0.25 -1.25--0.25 Eurozone Sov(€) 263.06 -0.03 0.08 4.83 -0.06 3.83 Tr 4pc '22 105.23 -0.03 0.00 0.00 -50.00 -105.77 108.06 105.23 38.77
Gilts( £) 370.50 -0.15 -1.22 6.33 -2.38 5.59 BONDS: BENCHMARK GOVERNMENT Tr 5pc '25 121.57 -0.02 0.00 -166.67 -81.82 -103.85 124.55 121.42 35.84
INTEREST RATES: MARKET Global Inflation-Lkd 302.35 0.33 0.56 8.15 -0.28 9.57 Red Bid Bid Day chg Wk chg Month Year Tr 1.25pc '27 107.44 0.13 8.33 -31.58 333.33 -77.19 109.23 103.96 36.34
Over Change One Three Six One Markit iBoxx £ Non-Gilts 385.66 0.01 0.58 5.27 0.06 5.66 Date Coupon Price Yield yield yield chg yld chg yld Tr 4.25pc '32 142.69 0.45 0.00 -15.09 55.17 -48.86 148.26 137.84 38.71
Nov 19 (Libor: Nov 18) night Day Week Month month month month year Overall ($) 283.17 0.23 0.70 8.07 0.70 8.07 Australia 11/22 2.25 104.30 0.10 0.00 -0.01 -0.04 -0.65 Tr 4.25pc '36 152.15 0.66 1.54 -12.00 37.50 -37.74 160.46 145.12 30.41
US$ Libor 0.08225 0.000 -0.003 -0.003 0.14650 0.22375 0.25688 0.33875 Overall( £) 370.78 -0.10 -0.73 5.78 -1.71 5.39 05/32 1.25 102.71 1.00 -0.07 -0.11 0.18 - Tr 4.5pc '42 173.01 0.86 1.18 -9.47 30.30 -29.51 186.37 162.55 27.21
Euro Libor -0.59029 -0.004 -0.001 0.000 -0.57614 -0.54543 -0.51986 -0.46757 Overall(€) 253.42 -0.01 0.18 3.85 0.07 3.09 Austria - - - - - - - Tr 3.75pc '52 178.45 0.90 1.12 -9.09 30.43 -26.83 198.36 164.59 24.10
£ Libor 0.04625 -0.001 0.001 -0.002 0.04400 0.04788 0.06050 0.13188 Treasuries ($) 262.44 0.22 0.12 8.36 0.12 8.36 02/47 1.50 138.15 0.04 0.01 -0.08 0.02 -0.44 Tr 4pc '60 203.88 0.87 2.35 -9.38 31.82 -26.27 231.12 186.33 24.12
Swiss Fr Libor 0.002 -0.80260 -0.76820 -0.72560 -0.61180 FTSE Belgium 09/22 1.00 102.93 -0.62 -0.01 -0.01 0.03 -0.08 Gilts benchmarks & non-rump undated stocks. Closing mid-price in pounds per £100 nominal of stock.
Yen Libor 0.004 -0.09083 -0.10050 -0.05967 0.05433 Sterling Corporate (£) - - - - - - Canada 11/22 2.00 103.48 0.24 0.01 -0.02 0.02 -1.42
Euro Euribor
Sterling CDs
0.006
-
-0.54600
-
-0.52700
-
-0.51300
-
-0.48300 Euro Corporate (€) 104.47 -0.05 - - 0.54 -1.73 06/30 1.25 104.79 0.73 0.01 -0.06 0.18 -0.78 GILTS: UK FTSE ACTUARIES INDICES
Euro Emerging Mkts (€) 646.47 4.54 - - 4.33 29.47 Denmark 11/22 0.25 101.73 -0.61 0.00 -0.01 0.04 0.06
US$ CDs - - - - Eurozone Govt Bond 110.04 -0.19 - - -0.34 -0.64 11/29 0.50 108.55 -0.43 0.01 -0.05 0.07 -0.13 Price Indices Day's Total Return Return
Euro CDs - - - - Fixed Coupon Nov 19 chg % Return 1 month 1 year Yield
CREDIT INDICES Day's Week's Month's Series Series Finland 04/23 1.50 105.39 -0.72 0.01 -0.02 0.03 -0.16
04/31 0.75 111.96 -0.38 0.01 -0.07 0.03 -0.39 1 Up to 5 Years 89.52 -0.01 2486.44 -0.22 1.30 -0.01
Short 7 Days One Three Six One Index change change change high low 2 5 - 10 Years 186.53 -0.05 3800.81 -0.93 3.17 0.20
Nov 19 term notice month month month year Markit iTraxx France 05/23 1.75 106.23 -0.70 0.00 -0.02 0.03 -0.13
3 10 - 15 Years 225.14 -0.08 4867.24 -1.60 4.99 0.48
Euro -0.74 -0.44 -0.71 -0.41 -0.69 -0.39 -0.67 -0.37 -0.66 -0.36 -0.66 -0.36 Crossover 5Y 282.70 2.42 -16.72 -48.19 377.90 279.11 11/26 0.25 105.09 -0.58 0.00 -0.04 0.02 -0.31
4 5 - 15 Years 195.15 -0.06 4060.53 -1.20 3.78 0.32
Sterling 0.45 0.55 0.70 0.80 0.78 0.88 0.82 0.97 0.89 1.04 Europe 5Y 51.05 1.12 -1.40 -3.71 66.97 49.12 Germany - - - - - - -
5 Over 15 Years 389.03 -0.26 6371.52 -4.32 8.21 0.86
Swiss Franc - - - - - - - - - - - - Japan 5Y 59.88 0.90 1.50 -5.49 70.43 57.83 05/23 1.50 105.69 -0.76 0.00 -0.02 0.05 -0.11
7 All stocks 191.17 -0.14 4081.71 -2.38 5.21 0.72
Canadian Dollar - - - - - - - - - - - - Senior Financials 5Y 64.18 1.31 -3.34 -8.23 86.20 62.33 02/26 0.50 106.67 -0.74 0.00 -0.03 0.07 -0.21
US Dollar 0.07 0.37 -0.02 0.28 0.01 0.31 0.09 0.39 0.13 0.43 0.19 0.49 08/50 0.00 104.60 -0.15 0.01 -0.08 0.06 -0.33 Day's Month Year's Total Return Return
Markit CDX Greece 02/26 3.65 119.05 0.58 0.00 -0.15 -0.21 -0.97
Japanese Yen -0.15 0.05 -0.20 0.00 -0.20 0.10 -0.30 0.00 -0.25 0.05 -0.20 0.10 Index Linked Nov 19 chg % chg % chg % Return 1 month 1 year
Emerging Markets 5Y 171.92 -1.77 0.13 -30.25 245.71 169.23
Libor rates come from ICE (see www.theice.com) and are fixed at 11am UK time. Other data sources: US $, Euro & CDs: Ireland 10/22 0.00 101.20 -0.62 0.00 -0.03 0.00 -0.18 1 Up to 5 Years 304.03 0.06 -0.37 -0.92 2511.64 -0.07 0.65
Nth Amer High Yld 5Y 334.18 5.51 1.48 -41.52 421.26 327.30
Tullett Prebon; SDR, US Discount: IMF; EONIA: ECB; Swiss Libor: SNB; EURONIA, RONIA & SONIA: WMBA. 05/30 2.40 125.88 -0.29 0.01 -0.06 0.02 -0.42 2 Over 5 years 809.40 -0.17 -4.98 6.97 6120.01 -4.90 7.35
Nth Amer Inv Grade 5Y 54.34 1.62 1.37 -2.77 65.62 52.16
05/30 2.40 125.88 -0.29 0.01 -0.06 0.02 -0.42 3 5-15 years 511.86 -0.01 -2.37 2.14 4077.22 -2.24 2.84
Websites: markit.com, ftse.com. All indices shown are unhedged. Currencies are shown in brackets after the index names.
Italy 08/22 0.90 102.28 -0.44 0.00 -0.05 -0.09 -0.60 4 Over 15 years 1059.42 -0.23 -5.96 8.55 7799.63 -5.90 8.82
02/25 0.35 101.92 -0.11 0.01 -0.08 -0.08 -0.78 5 All stocks 721.23 -0.15 -4.58 5.95 5553.83 -4.48 6.47
05/30 0.40 104.01 -0.02 0.03 -0.04 -0.12 -0.60
COMMODITIES www.ft.com/commodities BONDS: INDEX-LINKED 03/48 3.45 145.18 1.44 0.01 -0.10 -0.01 -0.78 Yield Indices Nov 19 Nov 18 Yr ago Nov 19 Nov 18 Yr ago
Japan 04/23 0.05 99.99 0.05 -0.01 -0.01 0.00 - 5 Yrs 0.00 0.00 0.42 20 Yrs 0.89 0.87 1.24
Energy Price* Change Agricultural & Cattle Futures Price* Change Price Yield Month Value No of
04/25 0.05 100.06 0.04 -0.01 -0.02 -0.01 - 10 Yrs 0.39 0.38 0.75 45 Yrs 0.84 0.83 1.18
Crude Oil† Dec 41.79 -0.08 Corn♦ Dec 421.25 -3.50 Nov 18 Nov 18 Prev return stock Market stocks
12/29 0.10 101.10 -0.02 -0.01 -0.02 -0.01 - 15 Yrs 0.72 0.70 1.08
Brent Crude Oil‡ 43.97 -0.23 Wheat♦ Dec 599.50 1.25 Can 4.25%' 21 105.20 -0.764 -0.484 0.49 8.41 96681.61 8
12/49 0.40 94.33 0.61 -0.02 -0.02 0.01 -
RBOB Gasoline† Nov 1.16 0.00 Soybeans♦ Jan 1165.75 -8.00 Fr 0.10%' 21 104.58 -0.945 -0.947 0.16 11.35 246234.42 15
Netherlands 07/22 2.25 104.94 -0.71 0.00 -0.02 0.01 -0.07 inflation 0% inflation 5%
Heating Oil† - - Soybeans Meal♦ Dec 390.80 -4.20 Swe 0.25%' 22 109.59 -0.505 -0.532 -0.16 26.51 200046.97 7
07/26 0.50 106.70 -0.66 0.00 -0.04 0.04 -0.27 Real yield Nov 19 Dur yrs Previous Yr ago Nov 19 Dur yrs Previous Yr ago
Natural Gas† Nov 2.57 -0.14 Cocoa (ICE Liffe)X Dec 1765.00 25.00 UK 1.875%' 22 110.27 -3.057 -3.032 0.17 15.74 776211.40 28
Ethanol♦ - - Cocoa (ICE US)♥ Dec 2638.00 0.00 New Zealand 04/25 2.75 110.71 0.30 -0.04 0.01 0.26 -0.85 Up to 5 yrs -2.73 2.92 -2.71 -2.17 -3.19 2.92 -3.03 -2.73
UK 2.5%' 24 359.07 -2.879 -2.858 0.01 6.82 776211.40 28
Uranium† Jul 33.80 - Coffee(Robusta)X Jan 1389.00 -20.00 05/31 1.50 106.32 0.87 -0.05 0.01 0.32 -0.67 Over 5 yrs -2.15 23.91 -2.16 -1.83 -2.18 23.98 -2.17 -1.86
UK 2%' 35 297.40 -2.541 -2.547 -2.48 9.08 776211.40 28
Carbon Emissions‡ - - Coffee (Arabica)♥ Dec 120.05 0.40 05/31 1.50 106.32 0.87 -0.05 0.01 0.32 -0.67 5-15 yrs -2.68 9.56 -2.68 -2.32 -2.79 9.56 -2.75 -2.40
US 0.625%' 21 - - - - - - -
White SugarX 415.10 -1.20 Norway 08/30 1.38 105.37 0.80 0.01 -0.05 0.17 - Over 15 yrs -2.09 29.08 -2.10 -1.78 -2.11 29.10 -2.10 -1.80
Diesel† - - US 3.625%' 28 135.31 -0.964 -0.978 0.04 16.78 1614013.10 43
Sugar 11♥ 15.33 -0.07 08/30 1.38 105.37 0.80 0.01 -0.05 0.17 - All stocks -2.16 22.06 -2.17 -1.84 -2.19 22.15 -2.18 -1.88
Base Metals (♠ LME 3 Months) Representative stocks from each major market Source: Merill Lynch Global Bond Indices † Local currencies. ‡ Total market
Aluminium 1987.00 -3.00 Cotton♥ Dec 69.70 0.08 Portugal 10/22 2.20 105.49 -0.65 0.00 -0.07 -0.06 -0.33 See FTSE website for more details www.ftse.com/products/indices/gilts
value. In line with market convention, for UK Gilts inflation factor is applied to price, for other markets it is applied to par
Aluminium Alloy 1665.00 -10.00 Orange Juice♥ Jan 128.35 -0.10 02/26 3.30 119.41 -0.35 0.00 -0.06 -0.07 -0.46 ©2018 Tradeweb Markets LLC. All rights reserved. The Tradeweb FTSE
amount.
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Iron Ore 128.30 1.05 UBS Bberg CMCI TR 13.20 4.85 -4.74 Germany - - - Sweden -1.45 - -2.27 United States 03/22 0.38 100.29 0.16 0.01 -0.02 0.01 - Data provided by Morningstar | www.morningstar.co.uk
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14 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Friday 20 November 2020

arts

East London’s Arcola theatre square and nine metres high at its high-
est point, using the shipping containers
is constructing a new outdoor as ballast and with a roof that floats
space for Covid and beyond. without use of a central post. Planters
around the space will provide scent and
Sarah Hemming reports colour — and garnishes for cocktails sold
at the bar — and the light and acoustics
will be softened by hanging drapes simi-

I
f launching a new show in these
uncertain times is risky, launching a
new theatre seems optimistic at the
least. But that is what the Arcola
theatre in east London is doing.
“I would say it’s the opposite of crazy,”
protests Arcola executive director Ben
Todd, affably, when I put this to him.
“It’s probably the most sensible thing
we’ve ever done.”
Step a little closer and you see what he
means. Arcola Outside will be a new
venue constructed on a derelict site
opposite the existing theatre building. A
large, covered open-air structure, it will
hold around 80 people (socially dis-
tanced), be fully equipped with stage,
bar and backstage and be ready to face
anything the English winter has to
throw at it. The current plan is to run
trial performances next month with a
view to opening fully in January (though
everything is contingent on lockdowns).
If successful, it could provide a model
for other organisations — not just thea-
tres — to follow.
The idea, explains Todd, was born not
of wild optimism, but of necessity.
“We’ve had a much more pessimistic
approach to Covid-19 than most people
for quite a long time. It was fairly obvi-
ous, even nine months ago, that we were
going to be operating in a way that was
Covid-secure for quite a while to come —
and indoors wasn’t the way to do it.”
There was an imperative, he adds, to
use government financial support
wisely, to create employment for artists
and entertainment for audiences. But
whereas for some theatres that might
mean moving online or opening safely
indoors, those options didn’t work for
the Arcola.
“What is the way to address this new
reality with integrity?” he asks. “There
are other organisations that are able to
migrate really well into digital format.
But that’s not us. We do straightforward,
good plays in a tiny room sitting on top
of each other. So outside was a sensible
thing to do.”
The thinking is typical of a theatre
that has, since its launch 20 years
ago, punched well above its weight.
Started by irrepressible artistic director
Theatre’s fresh-air future vision
Above: design Mehmet Ergen and executive producer
for the new Leyla Nazli in a former garment factory
Arcola Outdoors down a side street in Hackney, the
space. Below: Arcola has staged new plays, classics,
entrance to the European drama, fielded impressive
existing theatre casts and launched young writers. Actor
in Hackney Greg Hicks played Richard III at the
Bausor Studio; Lidia Crisafulli
Arcola; Barney Norris’s immensely
moving Visitors had its first outing there.
Nine years ago, the company moved
to larger premises — a former paint
factory in Ashwin Street. And just as
Frank McGuinness’s Factory Girls was
an early show at the original venue in
honour of the building’s former role,
the new theatre opened with Rebecca
Lenkiewicz’s The Painter: a drama about
artist JMW Turner (played by Toby
Jones), one of the paint factory’s most
famous customers.
The Arcola has also been at the fore-
front of seeking environmental sustain-
ability in theatres, largely because of
the presence of Todd, who runs its
sister company Arcola Energy and
describes himself as “an academic mar-
ried into Arcola”.
“I’m an engineer — I did a PhD on
clean power stations,” he says. “I was
going to have a sabbatical in the theatre
for a year. That was nearly 20 years ago
— I never managed to escape!”
But the intimacy of the theatre makes
it a poor fit for a pandemic that thrives
in packed indoor spaces. So the team
looked at the stretch of land opposite,
which housed a few old shipping con-
tainers and portable buildings. In keep-
ing with the sustainability ethos of the
theatre, those containers now find
themselves pressed into service for the
new venture. And what began life as
possibly “a few pub tables and umbrel-
las” has progressed into something
more substantial — and weatherproof.
“It was clear from the outset that any
temporary structure we put up would
likely blow away or get very, very wet,”
says Jon Bausor, who has designed the
new space. “So we’re creating something
that has more solidity — and hopefully
more of a grace and a beauty. We hope it
is a venue that can live on: so it can work
as a space during Covid but then evolve
to become something else.”
Bausor, an international stage
designer, has designed dozens of shows
for the indoor Arcola, and has also built
many striking outdoor sets, including a
vast suspended mirror that hovered
over The Seagull at Regent’s Park’s Open
Air Theatre. He designed the Paralym-
pics opening ceremony in London 2012.
For Arcola Outside, he says, “I’ve tried
to work out what [the venue] is, what it
stands for. I was looking at a lot of Mon-
golian yurts — these moveable palaces
from the Middle Ages for a nomadic life-
style — and thinking about what that
could be in a modern context. So it takes
its principles from that: it has outer col-
umns and a structure which requires no
central pillars.”
Collaborating with engineer Philip
Cooper, who worked with him on the
suspended mirror for The Seagull, he has
come up with a structure 17 metres
lar to those in an outdoor souk.
“It was important to make something
that was a surprise off Ashwin Street,”
says Bausor. “It’s quite hectic around
there. I was trying to imagine a secret
space that you could discover, so you
could step off the street into a kind of
haven: a calm space that feels com-
pletely separated from the outside
world.” The colours, he says will be
warm — rusts, ochres, browns — partly
“so it will give you the feeling of warmth
even if you’re not warm!”
The venue will not be heated: there is
no way to do so without wasting vast
amounts of energy. So will people come?
‘It’s the safest space
you can get and you just
need to put a few more
clothes on. I’d go!’
“It’s a different experience, a differ-
ent aesthetic and maybe that’s the point
— actually embracing that,” says Todd,
adding that shows will be short, there
will be hot mulled wine and blankets to
buy. “It’s the safest space you can get
and you just need to put a few more
clothes on. I’d go!”
The team hopes that Arcola Outside
will outlive its initial purpose. But its
wider legacy could be in helping to
address a much deeper shift in priorities
across society, prompted by the pan-
demic and the threat of climate change.
“Even once Covid has receded, I think
we might see a positive change in atti-
tude,” says Todd. “A willingness to be
outside, to dress to suit the weather —
because environmentally we need it
anyway. And the pandemic threat is
going to have to live on everybody’s risk
register now for a while. There is a
strong argument to say we mustn’t treat
this as a temporary blip and then go
back to business as usual. This is going
to happen again. Let’s be ready and try
to manage it a bit better next time. Let’s
try to learn something.”
arcolatheatre.com

Covid-proof opera faces eco-concerns

Masks on,
An international team in the Hong
Hong Kong have produced a Kong
Children’s
fully flexible, pandemic-ready Choir
piece, writes Andrew Jack performs
in ‘Aria’
Pattor Chan

W
hen the composer
Eugene Birman moved
from the UK to Hong
Kong two years ago, he
was shocked to discover
a city suffering from persistent pollu-
tion and smog, rather than the clean
modern urban environment he had
imagined.
That inspired Aria, which — despite
artistic constraints, local political
upheavals and the global disruption of
coronavirus — opened last week in Hong
Kong as one of the world’s first pandem-
ic-proof operas. It combines music,
installation art and big data to reflect on
environmental concerns.
“I wanted to do a project about the
environment that didn’t itself contrib-
ute negatively to the environment,” says
Birman. “A lot of others that do are hor-
rendously wasteful.”
Birman teamed up with Kingsley Ng,
a Hong Kong-Canadian artist who had
worked on bold projects including After
the Deluge, an installation in the city’s
giant underground storm water storage
tank, and Twenty Five Minutes Older, a
conceptual artwork inside a tram which
was taken to Art Basel.
The new work, Aria, is an 80-minute
combined opera and installation whose
audience — limited to 20 people for each
performance — do not sit in an audito-
rium but walk through different settings
in the city’s Forsgate Conservatory.
Working around the constraints of the
Conservatory meant using no tradi-
tional stage or scenery. That it itself was
also a decision linked the theme of sus-
tainability.
“We wanted to experiment with
interactive formats,” says Birman. “You
normally sit, and are a spectator: you
see a set on a stage and are forbidden
from entering it. It’s almost a taboo in
opera or music to let the audience in on
the creation.”
Instead, the creators divided the
roofed Forsgate Conservatory into seg-
ments through which audiences prome-
nade, allowing them to linger, listen and
observe. Ng likens it to a sushi conveyor
belt.
The audience members are ushered
by dancers with lanterns through a pri-
meval forest ecosystem to a post-
climate-collapse desert and then to a
contemporary podium, accompanied
by projections of social media reactions
to pollution as well as live singing from
the Hong Kong Children’s Choir and
holograms of Denmark’s Theatre of
Voices ensemble.
Aria is a reference to both music and
air. The artists worked with computer
scientists to analyse comments made on
social media about air pollution in Hong
Kong and the Chinese mainland to
inform the libretto and to project during
the performance. They developed an
algorithm that distorts the soundtrack
to reflect the local air pollution data.
They also worked with the Hong Kong
Children’s Choir, asking the children to
‘We didn’t want negativity
— it’s better to highlight,
dramatise, let people make
their own decisions’
contribute their own views of pollution.
“In opera, children are being used
increasingly because a child on the stage
means showing someone with inno-
cence and a future, but they have little
input into how the future is being cre-
ated,” says Birman. “We didn’t want to
force them to speak others’ words.”
Coronavirus delayed the launch by
several months and restricted the audi-
ence size. The singers have to use masks,
reinforcing the theme of breathlessness.
Travel restrictions meant that instead of
flying in the Theatre of Voices from Den-
mark, they were recorded and the
image projected with hologram technol-
ogy on to a jet of water.
From the start the two artists, work-
ing with Prof Johnny Poon at Hong Kong
Baptist University and colleagues from
the computer science department in a
wider project called Space to Breathe,
drew on the two key ideas: inter­activity
and sustainability.
This is not the first time the composer
has addressed sensitive themes in unu-
sual settings in his work: there has been
climate change, inequality and finance
in State of the Union and the financial cri-
sis in Nostra Cosa; No. 289, written for “50
voices and one megaphone”, was about
and performed on the disputed border
between Estonia and Russia.
But he argues that any underlying
political message should be subtle. “We
didn’t want negativity — it’s better to
highlight, dramatise, let people make
their own decisions,” he says. “That’s
more effective than blame: go home and
think about it.”
While the Hong Kong government
covered the estimated £220,000 costs
and made tickets available free of
charge, Aria has something in common
with much opera in its exclusivity. The
limited places were snapped up within
minutes of release, as residents sought
new cultural experiences after months
of demonstrations and controls on pub-
lic events driven by the virus.
But Birman argues that a compensat-
ing advantage of the final version is that
much of the performance is now “pre-
packed”, with the holograms pre-
recorded and touring versions likely to
cost less than £100,000. The logisti-
cal challenges and carbon emissions of
flying in the Theatre of Voices and props
have been eliminated.
Organisers need simply to
recruit local children’s choirs and feed
in the new location’s air pollution data to
modify the projections and music.
Several festivals around the world
including Manchester International
Festival are already in discussions to
present their own versions of Aria, and a
virtual reality version will be released
later this year. The result will be a recy-
clable opera for the new era.
newvision.gov.hk/2020/en/aria
Friday 20 November 2020
The G20 summit and a Biden administration could lead to new initiatives to help poorer countries
struggling to cope with the long-term economic impact of coronavirus.
Calling for a bigger pandemic response
I
n a crisis, it pays to be wealthy. The
response of the developed world to
the devastation of their economies
by coronavirus has been to throw
money at the problem. The IMF
estimates that the combined fiscal and
monetary stimulus delivered by
advanced economies has been equiva-
lent to 20 per cent of their gross domes-
tic product.
Middle income countries in the devel-
oping world have been able to do less
but they still put together a combined
response equal to 6 or 7 per cent of GDP,
according to the IMF.
For the poorest countries, however,
the reaction has been much more mod-
est. Together they injected spending
equal to just 2 per cent of their much
smaller national output in reaction to
the pandemic. That has left their econo-
mies much more vulnerable to a pro-
longed slump, potentially pushing mil-
lions of people into poverty.
From the start of the crisis, the IMF
and other international institutions
have warned in stark terms about the
threat that the pandemic presented to
the world’s poorest countries. In April,
Kristalina Georgieva, the IMF managing
director, said the external financing
needs of emerging market and develop-
ing countries would be in “the trillions
of dollars”.
‘There has been no
co-ordinated, messaged
response. The architecture
created in a different era is
struggling to adapt’
But the response from the interna-
tional community so far has been
muted. The IMF has lent $100bn in
emergency loans. The World Bank has
set aside $160bn to lend over 15 months.
The only co-ordinated innovation has
been a debt service suspension initiative
unveiled in April by the G20 group of the
world’s largest economies that allows 73
of the world’s poorest countries to post-
pone repayments.
“In this crisis, there has been no co-
ordinated, messaged response,” says
Douglas Rediker, a senior fellow at the
Brookings Institution. “The interna-
tional architecture that was created in a
different era is struggling to adapt.”
The situation is getting more urgent.
Zambia this week became the sixth
developing country to default or
restructure debts in 2020 and more are
expected as the economic cost of the
virus mounts — even amid the good
news about potential vaccines.
Some observers think that even large
developing countries such as Brazil and
South Africa, which are both in the G20
group of large nations, could face severe
challenges in obtaining finance in the
coming 12 to 24 months.
But there is also potential that the
international institutions will begin to
step up their response. The first oppor-
tunity is a G20 summit this weekend
which is expected to approve a “com-
mon framework” on debt treatment for
poor countries, moving beyond imme-
diate cash flow problems to address
longer-term debt sustainability.
Mohammed al-Jadaan, finance minis-
ter of Saudi Arabia, which holds the G20
presidency this year, says the frame-
work offers a “tool for structural
reform” to help heavily indebted low-
income countries break the cycle of
unsustainable borrowing, as relief will
be linked to IMF programmes.
The other factor is US President-elect
Joe Biden’s incoming administration,
which observers believe will be more
supportive of multilateralism than Pres-
ident Donald Trump. If that proves true,
it could revive a proposal for the IMF to
issue special drawing rights — an inter-
national reserve asset. SDRs can be used
to deliver cash injections that some offi-
cials believe could limit the economic
pain in the developing world.
“The SDRs idea will come back to life
under Biden,” says Tim Adams, chief
executive of the Institute of Interna-
tional Finance. “There will be a fresh set
of eyes and a willingness to look at any-
thing and everything that might work.”
Little sign of trickle-down
If so, it would mark a break with the
recent past. In contrast with the co-ordi-
nated action among the G20 during the
global financial crisis a decade ago,
much of the rich world has spent this
crisis looking after its own.
Some of their spending has trickled
down to poor countries. The US Federal
★ FINANCIAL TIMES
FT BIG READ. EMERGING MARKETS
By Jonathan Wheatley
Above: IMF Reserve and other advanced economy
managing
director
central banks have pumped trillions of
dollars into financial markets, buoying
Kristalina up demand for risky assets. As a conse-
Georgieva, left, quence, middle-income and some low-
and World Bank income countries were able to borrow
president David $145bn by issuing dollar-denominated
Malpass. Below: sovereign bonds between January and
a queue for free September, according to the IIF.
food in Multan, Ms Georgieva said such actions had
Pakistan, earlier “an incredibly high significance” in
this month. reducing uncertainty. “While there has
Islamabad was
the first to ask
been criticism that there hasn’t been the
same level of pronouncements by heads
for relief under of state as there was during the global
the debt service financial crisis, the mechanism of co-
suspension operation of finance ministry and cen-
initiative tral bank authorities has proven to be
FT montage
durable and is paying back,” she added.
Yet, many developing countries are
shut out of bond markets by high inter-
est rates. No country in sub-Saharan
Africa, for example, has issued interna-
tional bonds since the crisis began.
Other countries have used the availa-
ble short-term liquidity to finance an
immediate response, storing up poten-
tially severe problems ahead. Brazil
launched a generous income-transfer
programme, which it has had to rein in
because of budget constraints, and bor-
rowed heavily to fund it by issuing short-
term domestic bonds that offer cheap
finance but must be repaid quickly.
“Brazil and South Africa face the kind
of problem that other emerging markets
will slowly encounter — a big fiscal prob-
lem killing growth,” says Bhanu Baweja,
chief strategist at investment bank UBS.
The G20’s flagship response to the cri-
sis, the DSSI, only addresses a part of the
problem. The initiative allowed some of
the world’s poorest countries to post-
pone until December this year repay-
ments due on official bilateral loans
from G20 governments and their policy
banks — though the debts must still be
met in full, with repayments spread
Covid-19 raises the threat of systemic Covid-19 expected to reverse
risk in emerging markets progress in reducing poverty
Number of emerging market economies at each by at least three years
level of risk of fiscal crisis Nowcast of the global poverty rate at the
Low Medium High $1.90-a-day poverty line (%)
35 10.0
30 9.5
25
9.0
20
8.5
15
8.0
10
7.5
5 ened people in position, but will we have
0 7.0
Sep 2019 Mar 2020 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
Source: IMF Sources: Lakner et al (2020); PovcalNet; World Bank
over four years. Last month, the DSSI
was extended to June 2021, with repay-
ments spread over six years.
Forty-six debtor countries took up the
offer this year, deferring about $5bn in
repayments. That is only a quarter of
the amount projected by the G20 when
it launched the initiative and less than a
tenth of the increase in the external bor-
rowing needs of the eligible countries
this year as a consequence of the pan-
demic, according to the IMF.
Last week, the G20 agreed to go fur-
ther. Its proposed common framework,
to be approved at this weekend’s sum-
mit, is an advance on the DSSI, which
can offer short-term relief up to the
amount of debt falling due during the
‘If advanced economies
can’t agree on
[unconditional liquidity],
then the system is pretty
much bankrupt’
period but does not take into account a
country’s ability to pay.
The common framework aims to
address this by assessing whether a
country’s debts are sustainable, by sign-
ing it up to an IMF programme, and by
involving both official bilateral credi-
tors — governments and their policy
banks — and commercial creditors.
If successful, it will solve a big short-
coming of the DSSI, widely criticised for
failing to deliver relief from commercial
lenders, which the scheme called on to
participate on comparable terms with
bilateral creditors if asked to do so by
debtor countries. But most have been
reluctant to make that request. Only
three countries had approached com-
mercial lenders by the end of Septem-
ber, according to the IMF, and no
Covid-19 downside
9.2%
Covid-19
baseline
8.4%
Pre-Covid-19
request for relief has been made to
bondholders under the DSSI.
The reason is that many indebted
countries have spent years enacting the
kind of reforms mandated by the IMF
and by investors, for which part of the
reward is access to international bond
markets. They are reluctant to give up
that lifeline. Asking bondholders to
delay payments would constitute a
default and risk locking them out of
bond markets for years.
Pakistan, the first country to ask for
relief under the DSSI, said it would not
ask for private sector involvement and
that, if bilateral relief were made condi-
tional on securing commercial relief, it
would reconsider its request.
As a means of securing relief from the
private sector, then, the DSSI was a non-
starter. Critics say this reveals the lack of
co-ordination among the parties
involved, including the G20, the Paris
Club group of creditor nations, the IMF
and the World Bank.
“Part of the problem was not knowing
who was in charge,” says one senior offi-
cial involved in negotiations over the
initiative. “There were so many differ-
ent entities trying to steer things and
they were not talking to each other.”
Sino-US tensions
The discussions over how to respond to
the crisis have also been affected by the
growing tension between the US and
China, which has emerged this century
as the biggest bilateral lender to many
developing countries. It has provided
almost $150bn to governments and
state-owned companies in Africa, for
example, as it sought to secure com-
modity supplies and win contracts for
infrastructure projects.
Beijing has been criticised for a lack of
transparency in its loans, made by a
variety of state and quasi-state lenders
on both concessionary and commercial
15
terms, and for failing to participate fully
in the DSSI.
Among its most vocal critics is David
Malpass, president of the World Bank.
He said in October that it was “frustrat-
ing” that China was not participating
more fully, and that its lenders charged
higher interest rates than others with
“very little transparency” in their loan
contracts. China has rejected such criti-
cism, saying it is “actively committed to
fully implementing” the DSSI.
In fact, China has contributed $1.9bn
out of $5.3bn of relief delivered by the
DSSI this year according to an internal
G20 document seen by the Financial
Times — more than any other country.
Critics say the comments made by Mr
Malpass — nominated by Mr Trump for
the World Bank job — were designed for
consumption in Washington and have
been unhelpful at a time when China, by
co-operating on debt at the G20, is edg-
ing towards greater multilateral engage-
ment than has been its habit in the past.
Officials and
campaigners hope
that Joe Biden will
help reopen talks on
the use of special
drawing rights
One senior European official says an
aversion to multilateralism under Mr
Trump has meant the World Bank is co-
operating less with other institutions.
“It is quite hard to work with the World
Bank at the moment,” the official says.
Enforcing measures
Even if there is frustration at the slow
progress so far, some observers believe
that the political support for more sub-
stantial measures is improving.
The G20 summit is one chance to
build momentum. But some, including
Mr Rediker, have reservations about
how effective a common framework will
be. “You still end up with the member
countries and the private sector having
to enforce it, and there will be costs in
$160bn
Funds set aside by
doing so,” he adds.
Vera Songwe, UN under-secretary
the World Bank to general and head of the UN Economic
lend over 15 months. Commission for Africa, says the last
It estimates that low
and middle-income
thing developing countries need is
countries will need enforced private-sector involvement in
between $175bn and debt relief. “A common debt framework
$700bn a year until that confounds public concessional bor-
the end of the crisis rowing with commercial market access
would undermine Africa’s recovery.”
Instead, poor countries need conces-
$145bn
Dollar-denominated
sional lending and grants — sub-Saha-
ran Africa alone will need $100bn a year
sovereign bonds for the next three years, she says. “Oth-
issued by middle and erwise, we are heading for debt default
low-income nations on a scale never seen.”
between January
and September, Uneca is one of several organisations
according to the IIF and individuals backing the call for a
new issue of SDRs by the IMF. Their
appeal for developing countries is that
$1.9bn they fill a gap in the toolkit available to
advanced economies: money creation.
China’s contribution While advanced economies have been
to the $5.3bn of relief
delivered by the able effectively to print money by buy-
ing their own bonds in a world of low or
G20’s debt service
suspension initiative negative interest rates, most developing
countries cannot do that without risking
instability, inflation and worse.
SDRs, a form of virtual currency,
promise an immediate cash injection
with none of the conditionality attached
to IMF programmes. The IMF has issued
them in past crises and proponents say
it should do so now. But the proposal
was vetoed by the US in April on the
basis that it would benefit rich countries
more than poor ones, although critics
suggest the US was motivated by an
unwillingness to see funds going to
rivals such as China and Iran.
For many, the issuance of SDRs is the
biggest single test of global co-operation
in the crisis.
“SDRs mean giving unconditional
liquidity to developing countries,” says
Stephanie Blankenburg, head of debt
and development finance at the UN
Conference on Trade and Development.
“If advanced economies can’t agree on
that, then the whole multilateral system
is pretty much bankrupt.”
The hope, in such quarters, is that the
Biden administration will help reopen
the issue of SDRs to discussion.
Yet, even with increased support, the
IIF’s Mr Adams warns against compla-
cency. “Even before Covid, the world
was in the midst of a great wave of debt,”
he says. “We are going to need sober,
thoughtful leadership in how we man-
age those debts going forward. At the
technical level there are a lot of enlight-
the political leadership? I don’t know. I
hope so.”
Additional reporting by Andrew England
16
FRIDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2020
The tragedy in Ethiopia
needs a political solution
Crisis in the rebellious Tigray region cannot be solved by brute force
Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime min-
ister, says his federal troops will soon
march on Mekelle, capital of the rebel-
lious Tigray region, and that victory is
close. His government presents the
military campaign against the Tigray
People’s Liberation Front, prosecuted
with tanks and air strikes, as a simple
law and order exercise. With hundreds
of reported casualties that description
stretches credulity.
In Mr Abiy’s version of how this plays
out, TPLF leaders will be apprehended
and brought to justice and an interim
regional government imposed — at
which point the country can revert to
“normal”. Unfortunately, normal has
long been highly precarious in spite of
years of strong economic growth that
has held out great promise for the
country of 110m people. It is far from
assured that federal forces can achieve
the promised swift victory. The TPLF
ran Ethiopia for 27 years and is heavily
armed. Even if government troops cap-
ture the leadership, there is no guaran-
tee that other TPLF fighters won’t wage
a protracted guerrilla war or that the
Tigrayan people will acquiesce to a fed-
erally imposed government.
Nor, if Tigray is under some sort of
martial law, is it easy to see how Mr
Abiy can hold the open elections he has
promised. These are now set for June
and are already complicated by the
arrest of prominent opposition leaders
from Oromia and elsewhere. Unless Mr
Abiy can achieve an electoral mandate,
he will not regain the legitimacy he
needs to unite the country or convince
people of his liberal-sounding agenda.
Tigray is just one of the crises he faces.
Since he became prime minister in
2018, Mr Abiy has sought a new federal-
ist arrangement that plays down ethnic-
ity in an environment where identity
has become the principal means of
political mobilisation. That sounds
sensible to western ears. But many
Promise of bitcoin has
proved to be elusive
Cryptocurrency fails to provide investors with stability and protection
Bitcoin promises to be digital gold: safe,
valuable and rare. That could explain
much of the cryptocurrency’s rally
over the past year. Like the yellow-
coloured metal, the price of bitcoin is
supposed to surge as investors take
fright at the possibility of inflation from
central banks printing money or, for
some, the potential collapse of society in
the face of the coronavirus pandemic
and civil disturbance following the US
election. In those circumstances the two
scarce assets are supposed to retain
their value while others’ disappears.
Unfortunately, like gold, bitcoin’s
status as a safe haven is more theoret-
ical than anything else. Rather than
stability it offers investors volatility
and a chance to speculate on the
market’s sentiment towards the cur-
rency. The recent rise in the cryptocur-
rency’s valuation is no different. Inves-
tors looking for a safe place to keep
their wealth should look elsewhere.
The price of bitcoin in terms of the
US dollar hit a three-year high of close
to $18,000 this week, representing a
nearly 250 per cent rise since January.
Bitcoin’s price has spiked before: this
year’s increase in the cryptocurrency’s
price has seen it almost touch levels it
reached in 2017. That peak did not last,
however, and was followed by a deep
crash and calls for tighter regulation.
Bitcoin holders have learnt to live
with the volatility: as recently as March
the cryptocurrency lost half of its value
after investors realised the scale of dis-
ruption that coronavirus would bring
and rushed to sell anything they could
exchange to get hold of then-scarce
dollars. Such swings in bitcoin’s value,
both dramatically up and down in the
space of 12 months, hardly suggest it is
a stable store of value.
Instead of reflecting fears of geopolit-
ical risk or hyperinflation, the recent
rally in the cryptocurrency’s price has
happened alongside other risk assets.
Ethiopians, including people from Oro-
mia, Mr Abiy’s own, regard his vision as
an attempt to restore the type of cen-
tralised authority practised by Emperor
Menelik II, who reigned at the turn of
the 20th century, or the Derg military
junta of Mengistu Haile Mariam, over-
thrown in 1991. Until this fractious con-
stitutional issue is resolved through
national dialogue, ethnicity will con-
tinue to gnaw at Ethiopia’s body politic.
In the meantime, hostilities must
stop in Tigray. A humanitarian crisis is
under way, with thousands fleeing the
fighting into Sudan. A blockade of the
region and ethnically inspired massa-
cres threaten catastrophe. In one inci-
dent, says Amnesty International, hun-
dreds of non-Tigrayan civilians were
stabbed and hacked to death, though
an internet blackout makes details dif-
ficult to verify. Humanitarian organis-
ations have complained they are being
denied access to Tigray, a situation that
needs to be rectified immediately.
The international community has
been scandalously disengaged. Mr
Abiy may have calculated that this is a
good time to finish the TPLF off while
Washington is distracted. The UN
Security Council, the African Union,
the EU and others need to make it clear
that they will not stand by while Ethio-
pia slides into ruin.
Mr Abiy has rejected calls to negoti-
ate with the TPLF, which he has
labelled a “criminal clique”. The prime
minister, it should be recalled, worked
for the security apparatus while the
TPLF was running the country. To the
extent that there are law-and-order
issues, these should be addressed by
the police and the courts.
Yet, above all, this is a political crisis
for which a political settlement is ulti-
mately the only solution. Both sides
need to step back from the brink.
Whatever the underlying issues, tanks
and bombs will not solve them.
Stocks have similarly done well on
news of potential vaccines while tradi-
tional havens such as US treasuries —
and gold — have seen their value slip.
Perhaps the main factor in bitcoin’s
recent rise, then, is its potential for
more mainstream adoption beyond
hobbyists and speculators. Options on
the digital currency are more fre-
quently being traded on the Chicago
Mercantile Exchange while payments
company PayPal is offering the chance
in the US to buy and sell bitcoin
through its app. This has made it more
feasible as a form of money; bitcoin is
not widely accepted but PayPal is.
Yet there are no fundamentals on
which to base a judgment of bitcoin’s
value. Its current price just reflects
what people are willing to spend on it.
That may be a result of central banks’
easy money policies worldwide; bitcoin
looks appealing because other asset
prices are already so high and returns
so low. But it places it in a category
more like fine art or famous sneakers,
both of which have attained record val-
uations in auctions this year.
Bitcoin may have further to go,
thanks not to its own merits but to a
weakening of the dollar. Analysts fore-
cast the US currency could weaken 20
per cent next year as a working corona-
virus vaccine spurs growth and a
greater appetite for risk among inves-
tors. That would be something to wel-
come — not just for what it represents
but because it would help ease pressure
on emerging market borrowers who
rely on cheap dollar financing.
It may be precisely because the Fed-
eral Reserve has done such a good job
of meeting the world’s need for dollars
that investors feel comfortable taking a
punt on bitcoin and venturing away
from the comparative stability of fiat
currency. If so, cryptocurrency advo-
cates have the central bank to thank for
their recent success.
★ FINANCIAL TIMES
Letters
IMF must help Africa to woo private investors
There are many positives for poorer
African nations if your article “G20
nears accord over IMF relief funds”
(Report, November 19) is correct. All
of the sub-Saharan nations I operate in
have been materially impacted by the
pandemic and — as importantly — by
the squeeze on international
investment and business activity that
ordinarily contribute to our economic
and social development.
Cash injections from the IMF will
bolster their balance sheets and debt
relief from the G20 and Paris Club will
help, but facilitating proper investment
that caters for long-term development
is infinitely more valuable.
Metals shortages pose risk
for Britain’s EV ambitions
The UK government’s announcement
(Report, November 16) of a 2030 ban
on petrol and diesel cars is a very
positive move. The problem that the
government and the carmakers must
now address is how they will secure
adequate supply of the metals which
are essential to making the batteries.
In mining, the time lag from proving
a new resource to production of metal
is seldom less than five years. The most
conservative electric vehicle (EV)
adoption rates over the next decade
will require a tripling of global cobalt
production (even with the progression
to nickel-rich cathodes), and for
battery grade nickel and lithium to be
at even higher multiples of present
global supply.
In order to achieve this, significant
investment must be made into the
mining industry to bring new projects
online. However, without much higher
metals prices, it is unlikely that
sufficient funding will come from the
capital markets.
The UK government should look to
utilise sovereign funds to invest in
mining projects to ensure preferential
access to the supply chain that
supports EV manufacturing
domestically here in the UK.
Brian Menell
Chairman and CEO of TechMet
London W1, UK
Shipping looks for help
to hit net-zero targets
Boris Johnson’s announcement of a
green industrial revolution was
welcomed by the UK shipping sector
(Opinion, November 18). As an island
nation ships play a pivotal role by
moving 95 per cent of all UK goods. But
if we are going to reach our net-zero
target by 2050 we need international
collaboration to reduce emissions
across global shipping.
We call on the government to
support the industry’s plans for a $5bn
international research and
development fund to develop new,
clean fuels.
As the shipping industry commits to
new short-term measures to cut carbon
emissions, we will continue working
with the government and industry
partners, in the build up to next year’s
COP26 climate change conference and
beyond, to ensure the UK becomes a
world leader in green maritime
technology.
Bob Sanguinetti
CEO, UK Chamber of Shipping
London SE1, UK
Covid could
change our
tolerance
of flu deaths
Notebook
by Jemima Kelly
Highly-indebted countries struggling
to attract investment need
international institutions to be more
creative when meeting their
investment objectives.
Africa requires a bespoke approach
which recognises its challenges. China
is wise to this. It is evident everywhere
in Africa that the Chinese are able to
free up finance, deploy capital and
mobilise far faster than their Western
counterparts and do so in a manner
that meets the specific requirements of
the countries themselves.
The assumption is that the Chinese
are doing something extraordinary, in
actual fact they’re simply listening to
West Balkans diplomacy
has echoes of Soviet past
I was saddened to read your article by
Valerie Hopkins and Michael Peel
“Bulgaria dashes N Macedonia hopes
over EU membership” (November 18)
describing how Bulgaria had decided to
veto North Macedonia’s accession to
the EU.
The European future of the Western
Balkans is important for the stability of
Europe. Unfortunately, it seems that
the values and decisions of Bulgaria as
a member state are still influenced by
its Soviet era past.
A dispute about one’s identity and
language in 2020 in our fast and
connected world is absurd.
All people have the right to declare
their identity. The Macedonian
language has been internationally
recognised since 1971 and if Bulgaria
can aggressively dispute the issues of
identity and language of a nation today,
and bully a smaller neighbour, then
imagine how it was in the past after the
Ottomans left the Balkans and what
kind of historic truth Bulgaria wants to
impose on North Macedonia today.
The Balkan region, unfortunately, is
full of leaders that are held back by
their history instead of looking to the
future. Leaders that consciously dream
of countries bigger than their borders,
while endangering the future of
millions of poor and suffering people in
the region.
Nationalism for internal political
reasons has long lasting effects for the
future prosperity of the Balkans’
citizens. This behaviour should be
condemned by the EU and its member
states.
Gorjan Lazarov
Prague, Czech Republic
Every evening for the past fortnight or
so, fireworks have been going off
where I live, in east London. This is
not, despite what the US press might
have you believe, in honour of Joe
Biden’s election victory. It’s because
Brits are very fond of setting off
fireworks at this time of year. Not only
do we have Diwali to observe, but we
also feel a pagan compulsion to
celebrate Guy Fawkes’ failed attempt
to blow up parliament four centuries
ago by setting off small explosions of
our very own.
All these splendid bangs, and the
dangers associated with setting them
off — some 2,000 British people end
up in hospital with firework burns
each year — have got me thinking
about risk and how we tolerate or
even embrace it some moments, and
try to avoid it at all costs at others.
Another, more lethal seasonal risk is
the flu — in a bad year, as many as
25,000 people die from the virus in
England alone. Yet this year, thanks in
large part to lockdowns, flu cases are
way down across the world and are
likely to stay that way.
That’s because the habits we’ve
adopted to limit the spread of
coronavirus — handwashing, mask-
wearing and distancing — are effective
for other respiratory pathogens too.
“The measures we’re taking are
enough to essentially eliminate flu,”
says David Spiegelhalter, chair of the
Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence
Communication at Cambridge
university. A study by the US Centers
for Disease Control has found huge
If you are not satisfied with the FT’s response to your complaint, you can appeal
to the FT Editorial Complaints Commissioner: complaints.commissioner@ft.com
the needs of the various countries that
they’re seeking to partner with.
Where capital is set aside for Africa
it is too often not utilised because
criteria are not met. As a result, both
African consumers and Western
investors lose out.
Even if there is no breakthrough on
special drawing rights (SDRs) at this
G20 meeting, I hope the IMF and
World Bank will work towards
adapting their investment criteria to
enable private sector investors like me
to better contribute to long-term,
sustainable development in Africa.
Kwaku Boakye-Adjei
Colmar Berg, Luxembourg
Call for targeted sanctions
against China aggression
It was disturbing to read the letter
“Beijing’s intervention is a crisis Hong
Kong created” (November 18), where
the author appears to be blaming the
hundreds of thousands of
Hongkongers, who have asked for
nothing but the rights and freedoms to
which they are entitled, for their own
oppression.
For months, the citizens of Hong
Kong have been standing up for the
rights legally granted to them under
the UN recognised Sino-British Joint
Declaration. To describe the
participants in this vast movement for
liberty and democracy as “rioters” is a
gross inaccuracy. Peaceful protests
were escalated by a brutal Hong Kong
police force and the issue further
exacerbated by Hong Kong authorities
displaying utter contempt for
democratic norms.
The world cannot and should not
stand by and allow the totalitarian
Chinese Communist party to run
rampant over human rights. Instead,
we must stand together behind the
Hongkongers fighting for their freedom
and push for targeted sanctions against
the true aggressors — the authorities in
Hong Kong and Beijing.
Lord Shinkwin
Vice-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary
Group on Hong Kong
Lord Alton of Liverpool
Vice-Chair
Geraint Davies MP
Vice-Chair
Houses of Parliament, London SW1, UK
PM should let unionist case
be made by Scots Tories
You report that the Conservative party
plans to create a task force of MPs to
devise a strategy for preserving the
union with Scotland (Report,
November 18).
The most constructive decision the
overwhelmingly English Conservative
party could take would be to cut
completely their ties with the party
north of the border in order to enable it
to make a case for the union not just to
fellow Conservatives but also to
supporters of the moribund Scottish
Labour and Liberal Democrat parties.
A united unionist party untied from
the incubus of English Toryism would
surely be able to give the Scottish
National party a run for their money in
the forthcoming Scottish
parliamentary elections.
Michael Williams
Letchworth Garden City
Hertfordshire, UK
falls in flu activity both in the
southern hemisphere’s winter and in
the US summer season.
Does that mean, therefore, that we
should be locking down every year to
prevent the excess flu deaths that we
are likely to avoid this winter? Nobody
has suggested that. Yet some might
make a case for continuing with some
of the behavioural changes adopted
for Covid-19.
Influenza spreads similarly, though
not identically, to coronavirus. Flu is
less infectious. The “basic
reproduction number”, or R-zero — a
measure of a disease’s ability to spread
between people when left unchecked
— is estimated at between 1.4 and 1.6
for flu. Covid-19 is thought to be
around 3. Epidemiologists use a
second measure — the “effective
reproduction number”, or R — to
track the number of people who could
be infected by an individual at the
current time. When this falls below
one, the virus gradually dies out. Prof
Spiegelhalter reckons that flu’s R will
stay at “far less than 1” this year. That
will mean “thousands” of flu deaths in
the UK will be avoided.
An added reason flu deaths might
be kept low in the UK this winter is
that the government is offering the
influenza vaccine to record numbers
of people. And Covid-19 is taking the
lives of some of those who would have
died of flu. But even so, the decline
would be significant.
So what does this mean for the
future? Up to 650,000 people die from
flu worldwide each year — will this
Friday 20 November 2020
Email: letters.editor@ft.com
Include daytime telephone number and full address
Corrections: corrections@ft.com
Small-cap fund managers
require encouragement
Following the letter from Harry
Nimmo on the role of active fund
managers in raising capital (November
17) I would like to highlight what I
believe is the importance of private
investors in this process.
Increasingly, small-cap fund
managers are wary of investing in very
small companies typically with market
capitalisation of less than £200m
following the well publicised demise of
certain funds in recent years.
The lack of liquidity is the main
reason cited for this and now makes
such investments very difficult for
professional fund managers. It is not
worth taking the risk from a career
perspective.
In addition, the obstacles put up by
the investment banks and regulators to
prevent individual investors
participating in IPOs is making the
flotation of the next generation of
public companies more difficult.
Further, removal of pre-exemption
rights by companies during the
Covid-19 crisis has been used as a
smokescreen to prevent individual
shareholders participating this year.
Again undermining the position of the
individual investor.
A diverse, engaged and long-term
shareholder base can only be a healthy
development for public companies and
should be encouraged by all.
Guy Crossland
Overton, Hampshire, UK
Generation Z and parents
who fret over lockdown
I am fed up with adults complaining on
behalf of us millennials (Letters,
November 12).
Throughout the pandemic,
melodramatic overgeneralisations have
become commonplace among the
educated urban elite who claim to “get”
Gen-Z-ers. My parents are culprits of
this, telling me how my generation is
going to suffer a massive collective
mental meltdown.
But I don’t buy it. I am not so
completely shut off from the world as
to suggest that nobody has suffered
mental health problems over
lockdown. I mean, how could I be with
the BBC almost daily doing a piece
about how somebody has had a bad
lockdown. And, of course, this is a
problem that needs to be addressed.
But it’s like we’re being treated as a
single unit, which the older generation
views as emotionally less hardy than
they were. This constant worrying
about us has not just been a feature of
lockdown. Before this, it was
technology — oh, the woes of
technology, hey!
But I implore you to stop worrying
about us. This situation is by no means
ideal, but we will muddle through it,
just as everybody else has.
Bertie Low
Devizes, Wiltshire, UK
Johnson’s plan is counting
on a less boggy landing
I was interested to learn of the prime
minister’s ambition in point six of his
article “Now is the time to plan
Britain’s green recovery” (Opinion,
November 18). Will his zero-emission
plane suffer the fate of other feats — a
landing zone, like Alcock and Brown’s,
in a bog in Ireland?
Gavan Sellers
London NW10, UK
number now seem unacceptable? Or
will we be happy to carry on as before,
given that the death rate for flu is only
around 0.1 per cent, five to 10 times
lower than for Covid-19, and we all die
eventually?
“From a scientific perspective, I
think we have been forced by Covid to
experiment with various non-
pharmaceutical infectious control
measures and we have a sense of how
burdensome various ones are,” says
Carl Bergstrom, a theoretical and
evolutionary biologist at the
University of Washington in Seattle.
Extreme, unnatural behavioural
changes such as social distancing may
be hard to maintain. But Prof
Bergstrom thinks that where
protective measures do not disrupt
lives significantly, they may stick. He
points to a comment made by Anthony
Fauci, the US infectious disease expert:
“As a society, just forget about shaking
hands.” My hunch is that, for the most
part, we will return to our old ways.
Adjustments will be a matter of
preference. People who enjoy working
from home will stay put when they get
so much as a sniffle. Those who dislike
shaking hands with strangers will have
a valid excuse to avoid doing so.
But we’ll keep drinking too much,
and driving over the speed limit, and
setting off fireworks. Because after
Covid-19 — if such a time exists —
what we’ll consider the biggest risk
won’t be death but the failure to really
live our lives.
jemima.kelly@ft.com
Friday 20 November 2020
global affairs
Philip
Stephens
R
e-engage or rebuff? Joe
Biden’s presidential election
victory is a reprieve for
Atlanticism. Europeans and
Americans are talking again
about what they can do together. High
on the agenda is handling Vladimir
Putin’s Russia.
Donald Trump’s departure from the
White House will be an obvious
moment to turn the screws on the
Kremlin to raise the cost of Mr Putin’s
myriad breaches of the rules-based
international order. Another response
would be to test if there is an opportu-
nity to recast the relationship. The two
approaches are not as far from each
other as they might seem.
These are not the best of times for
Mr Putin. A few months ago, he was
AI is reshaping
banking for
good and ill
FINANCE
Gillian
Tett
L
ast week Barclays’ credit card
business struck a deal with
Amazon to offer seamless cus-
tomised shopping and pay-
ment services in Germany.
The announcement drew little atten-
tion amid the US election, pandemic
pain — and the cancellation of Ant
Financial’s putative $37bn initial public
offering. But investors and regulators
should pay attention. That is not
because of what the deal shows about
German shopping habits, Amazon’s
voracious expansion or Barclays strat-
egy, per se.
Instead, the German tie-up’s real
significance is as a tiny, but unusually
visible, sign of a feverish race under way
at banks and tech companies to find
ways to use big data and artificial intelli-
gence in finance. Essentially, Barclays
and Amazon are linking data with AI
analysis to approve credit (or not) and
predict what customised services cli-
ents will want next. “I personally think
that the partnership with Amazon has
been one of the most important things
to have happened to Barclays in the past
five years,” Jes Staley, Barclays chief
executive, told me.
What happens next in this AI race
Europe needs to build the digital future, not just bash Big Tech
TECH NOLOGY
John
Thornhill
A
year ago, Margrethe
Vestager was handed a sim-
ple mission that is fiend-
ishly tricky to fulfil: make
Europe fit for the digital
age. The EU’s executive vice-president
is now nearing delivery time. Over the
next few months, the European Com-
mission will unveil landmark legislation
to help protect consumers and smaller
companies from the overmighty US tech
giants, combat disinformation and
cyber crime, improve connectivity and
unleash entrepreneurial innovation.
It would be overstating things to say
this is a make-or-break moment for the
EU; for centuries Europe has proven
itself to be as reinventive as it is robust.
But this legislation may help determine
whether Europe can catch up and even
The case for a Biden-Putin thaw
celebrating constitutional changes that
would allow him to serve as president
for life. It has been downhill ever since.
The Russian economy, weakened by
low oil prices, has been battered by the
Covid-19 pandemic. The rouble has
fallen sharply and living standards are
moving in the same direction. The presi-
dent spends a lot of time locked away in
his Dacha outside Moscow.
Pro-democracy protesters have taken
to the streets in neighbouring Belarus. A
botched attempt to poison Russian
opposition leader Alexander Navalny
with novichok has reminded the world
of the Kremlin’s sponsorship of political
assassination and prompted a new
round of western sanctions. Russia’s
continued presence in eastern Ukraine
comes at the expense of costly sanctions
imposed by the US and EU.
A war between Armenia and Azerbai-
jan has destabilised the south Caucasus
and seen Turkey challenge Moscow for
regional influence. Political unrest in
Kyrgyzstan has put a question mark
over Russian influence in central Asia.
As for Russia’s interventions in Syria
and Libya, as bold as they may seem,
could soon matter enormously — help-
ing to determine the future winners
in finance and the next big set of regula-
tory risks.
The AI platforms now being deployed
in finance are exponentially more pow-
erful than anything seen before. In par-
ticular, the capabilities unleashed by a
subset of AI called “deep learning” rep-
resent “a fundamental discontinuity”
from the past, a new MIT paper warns.
Jack Ma, founder of Ant’s parent com-
pany, Alibaba, was arguably one of the
first to spot the potential. It uses data on
consumer and corporate digital activity
to predict credit risk and provide cus-
tomised services. That is a key reason
why the Chinese finance group has
expanded at such a dizzy pace. But west-
ern companies are racing to catch up
both in retail — with Barclays’ German
deal — and wholesale finance.
In theory, this could be beneficial as a
way to “democratise finance”, as Mark
Carney, former Bank of England gover-
nor, has observed. More specifically,
these innovations should enable finan-
cial companies to offer consumers
“more choice, better-targeted services
and keener pricing”.
They should also cut corporate bor-
rowing costs. Ant has used its vast data
troves and AI to analyse credit risks in a
way that its says enables the company to
offer cheaper loans. Marshalled cor-
rectly, AI could also help regulators and
risk controllers spot fraud more easily,
and improve bank stress tests.
But there are enormous potential
costs too. One of these is the propensity
outpace the US and China in many
fields, or limp along in the digital slow
lane.
Investors have already delivered their
preliminary, and pessimistic, verdict:
the US tech sector is today worth more
than all the stock markets of 27 EU
member countries combined.
As politically deft as she is tough, Ms
Vestager is well prepared for the chal-
lenge, even though she suffered a big
defeat this year when trying to force
Apple to pay more taxes. In a telephone
interview last week, she said that while
she was excited by the uses of technol-
ogy, as demonstrated by its indispensa-
bility during the pandemic, she was also
focused on its potential threats to com-
petitive markets and free societies.
It must be the responsibility of demo-
cratic politicians to decide how technol-
ogy should best be deployed rather than
allow corporate bosses to dictate all the
terms of interaction, she said. The same
technology that could be used to pro-
mote innovation and inclusion also ena-
bled discrimination and exclusion.
“Technology changes society at a very
fundamental level,” she said.
★ FINANCIAL TIMES
Opinion
it is hard to quantify the strategic gains.
Mr Trump’s defeat robs Mr Putin of
his most important admirer and of a
relationship that added legitimacy to his
authoritarian rule. More than that, Mr
Biden promises to refurbish the Atlantic
alliance. President-elect Biden is of a
generation that greatly prizes Nato.
Put the various woes together and
it cannot be beyond possibility that
A reset has a chance of
success only if Moscow
commits to altering
its behaviour
Mr Putin is now considering whether his
regime’s best interests lie in another
four years in open conflict with the west.
If there was ever going to be a time to
consider some sort of accommodation
this must surely be it.
Reset, of course, is not Mr Biden’s
favourite word. As vice-president, he
was around when Barack Obama
launched just such a policy in 2009. It
of AI programs to embed bias, including
racism, into decision making. Another
revolves around privacy risks.
A third is antitrust: since having a
huge data base offers a compelling
advantage in AI, there is a tendency for
dominant companies to become ever
more dominant. A fourth, related issue
is herding: since AI programs are often
constructed on similar lines, their use
could reduce institutional diversity and
undermine the resilience of finance.
However, the biggest problem of all is
opacity. “The lack of interpretability or
‘auditability’ of AI and machine learn-
ing methods could become a macro-
level risk,” a new paper from the Finan-
cial Stability Board notes. “Applications
of AI and machine learning could result
in new and unexpected forms of inter-
What happens in this
race could help
to determine the next
big set of regulatory risks
The main outlines of the EU’s
legislative push are already emerging.
The EU will recognise the central impor-
tance of the big tech platforms by defin-
ing them as digital gatekeepers and
holding them to higher standards of
openness and responsibility than
smaller competitors. It is opting for this
differential approach, even though
some lawyers argue it is antithetical to
key principles of competition law.
The game-changer would
be if the EU could create a
radically different, more
decentralised data economy
But the EU is more likely to try
to cajole these tech giants into modify-
ing their practices rather than attempt-
ing to break them up. The commission
will certainly be a lot warier in nodding
through any acquisitions in future — as
it did with Facebook’s purchase of
WhatsApp.
Perhaps the most intriguing area for
went nowhere. And in the aftermath of
Mr Putin’s invasion of Crimea and east-
ern Ukraine, the vice-president took
much of the responsibility for policy
towards Moscow and eastern Europe.
This was before the Kremlin’s interfer-
ence in the 2016 US election to tilt the
odds against Hillary Clinton.
More recently, Mr Biden is on record
as saying that the west should impose
real costs on Mr Putin’s regime for viola-
tions of international norms and that
the US will back civil society groups
opposing Kremlin authoritarianism.
And yet. Mr Biden is also a pragma-
tist. He has signalled that, as Mr Putin
suggested, the New Start strategic arms
treaty — the last bilateral agreement
limiting nuclear weapons — should be
extended beyond its February expiry.
The logic is straightforward: whatever
the state of relations between Washing-
ton and Moscow there will be occasions
when the two sides would do best
to co-operate. Climate change might
be another area; so, too, the global
distribution of Covid-19 vaccines.
The west, after all, did business with
Moscow at the height of the cold war.
connectedness between financial
markets and institutions.” Yikes.
So what should be done? One obvious
and tempting idea might be for politi-
cians to press the “pause” button.
Indeed, that is what Beijing seems to be
trying to do with Ant (although it is
unclear how far the decision to halt the
IPO reflects grand policy concerns, as
opposed to politics.)
However, it will not be easy to stuff the
AI genie back into the bottle. Nor is it
necessarily a good idea, given the poten-
tial benefits. What would be far better is
for policymakers and financiers to
embrace four ideas.
First, companies engaged in AI-ena-
bled financial activities must be regu-
lated within a finance framework. That
does not mean transposing all the old
banking rules on to fintech; as Mr Ma
has argued, these are not all appropri-
ate. But central bankers and regulators
must retain oversight of fintech and
maintain a level playing field, even if
that requires them to expand their over-
sight into new areas, such as the data
being plugged into AI platforms.
legislative activism, though, will be how
far the EU goes in attempting to shape
markets to stimulate innovation.
Europe’s entrepreneurs mainly want
EU leaders to deliver on existing prom-
ises to remove national regulatory barri-
ers, complete the digital single market,
harmonise tax and stock options regimes
and boost local capital markets.
But the bloc is promising to go further.
Already, it has earmarked 20 per cent of
its post-pandemic recovery funds for
digital initiatives. And it is exploring
how to change the rules of the data econ-
omy to help level the field for competi-
tion and preserve privacy. Not only does
data have huge economic value, it also
has extreme personal significance. In a
world of identity politics, as Ms Vestager
puts it, “data defines us”.
The EU is considering whether to force
the big tech companies to share ano-
nymised data. It is not yet clear exactly
how this would work, nor whether it is
even feasible in a secure way.
But Michelle Meagher, a lawyer and
author of Competition is Killing Us, says
that such data sharing could be a very
powerful way of challenging the tech
Whether such co-operation could be
the prelude to a general thaw is the more
difficult question. I have my doubts. Mr
Putin has spent 20 years casting himself
as the leader Russia needs to stand up to
the west. The sense of grievance at the
loss of the Soviet empire runs deep.
On the other side of the fence, many,
perhaps most, Europeans would back a
reset. Some, notably French president
Emmanuel Macron, have been eager
to normalise relations with Mr Putin.
German chancellor Angela Merkel,
under pressure to cancel construction
of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to carry
Russian gas directly into Germany,
would also be receptive.
Therein lies the danger. Much as it
makes sense for Mr Biden to explore the
possibility of warmer ties, too many
Europeans have been ready to bow to
Mr Putin’s terms. In truth, a reset would
have a useful chance of success only if
Moscow committed to an enduring
change in its behaviour. The way to
persuade Mr Putin is to be implacably
tough from the outset.
philip.stephens@ft.com
Second, regulators and risk managers
must bridge information silos. Very few
people understand both AI and finance;
instead, the people with these skills
typically sit in different institutions and
departments. This is alarming.
Third, we cannot hand all the creation
and control of AI-enabled finance to
geeks with tunnel vision; instead, the
people crafting strategy must have a
holistic view of their societal impact.
But for this to happen, there needs to
be a fourth development: politicians
and the wider public must pay attention
to what is under way, instead of out-
sourcing it to technical experts.
This will not be easy, given that AI is
hard to understand. But the 2000s
showed what can happen when geeks
with tunnel vision go mad in finance and
politicians ignore them. We cannot
allow this again. If you thought the 2008
financial crisis was bad, just imagine
one that moves faster and goes farther
because it is enabled by AI. That should
scare us into a policy debate right now.
gillian.tett@ft.com
industry’s “narrative of inevitability”,
which favours existing giants, and
empowering local enterprise. “We need
to bring back the idea that companies
exist at the pleasure of, and in service to,
the public,” she says.
The real game-changer would be if
Europe could pioneer the creation of a
radically different and more decentral-
ised data economy, as envisaged by,
among others, Solid technology master-
minded by Tim Berners-Lee, the inven-
tor of the world wide web.
Flanders has just begun deploying
this technology to provide local services
to its 6.5m citizens. “By putting the user
in control we will have a totally different
perspective on how to use data,” says
Raf Buyle, an information architect for
the Belgian region’s government.
The EU commission should be mak-
ing as much effort to nurture new ways
of building the future as to regulating
what already exists. Bash Big Tech by all
means. But to make Europe truly fit for
the digital age, Ms Vestager needs to be
as inventive as she is defiant.
john.thornhill@ft.com
17
Beating Covid
will take far
more than a
new vaccine
Paul
Hudson
W
e are entering a new
phase of Covid-19 as
interim data, first from
Pfizer and BioNTech,
and then Moderna,
show promise of a safe and effective vac-
cine. More candidates are expected to
follow — Sanofi has two vaccines in tri-
als. One, a collaboration with GSK, is
based on our flu vaccine and data from
phase 1 and 2 studies will come shortly.
The second is a messenger RNA vaccine
similar in approach to Pfizer and Mod-
erna. But, having a vaccine is only one
facet in the complicated war to contain
the virus.
Distribution is perhaps the biggest
hurdle. Vaccines are not interchangea-
ble and ensuring that individuals get
two doses, if required, of the same vac-
cine is critical. There may also be issues
with safeguarding potency. Moderna’s
and Pfizer’s vaccines need to be stored at
minus 20C and about minus 70C respec-
tively, and used within five or 30 days of
being refrigerated. Pharmaceutical
companies are rushing to develop trans-
portable cold storage containers and
logistics companies are building freezer
farms. Mass vaccination clinics, such as
the UK’s repurposed Nightingale hospi-
tals, could help distribution in cities.
But for those in rural settings — and
for low to middle-income countries —
the logistical barriers are bound to delay
the vaccine’s wide distribution, which is
vital to stop the virus circulating. This is
why we need several different vaccines.
Some will use newer technology requir-
ing innovations along the “cold chain”.
Others will build on proven approaches
To distribute a single dose
to the planet’s 7.8bn people,
the equivalent of 8,000
Boeing 747s will be needed
to respiratory viruses, and use estab-
lished distribution channels, such as
those used to deliver influenza vaccines
around the world.
Computer modelling is paramount to
determine how many needles, syringes
and vials will be required worldwide. In
the US, 850m needles and syringes will
be needed to deliver Covid-19 and flu
vaccines. In May, the Strategic National
Stockpile held just 15m syringes. The US
government is working to increase sup-
ply, and international groups such as the
UN are also preparing stockpiles. But we
need to analyse projections and adopt a
system-wide approach to ensure we
have enough. As with mask production
ramp-ups and other recent manufac-
turing feats, this issue can be solved with
concerted global collaboration.
Transportation of the Covid-19 vac-
cine will be a massive undertaking for
airline and shipping companies. To dis-
tribute a single dose to the planet’s 7.8bn
people, the equivalent of 8,000 Boeing
747 cargo aircraft will be needed.
Ground shipping companies will have to
develop new routes to take vaccines
from warehouses to distribution cen-
tres. Since the start of the pandemic,
pharma and transportation companies
have worked together to find new routes
so that medicines continued to reach
patients in a timely manner — even as
borders closed. We need to build on this
collaboration.
Lastly, we must redouble efforts to
reassure the public that Covid-19 vac-
cines will be thoroughly assessed for
safety. A recent poll in the US found that
only 51 per cent of people say they plan
to take a Covid-19 vaccine, and some
countries in Europe are also experienc-
ing vaccine scepticism. As vaccine man-
ufacturers, we need to be as transparent
as possible about the clinical trial proc-
ess and measures to ensure safety. As
we’ve witnessed first-hand with Sanofi’s
vaccines for polio and the flu, communi-
ty-driven models focused on education
and transparency help with vaccine
acceptance, especially with healthcare
workers’ support.
Vaccines aren’t magic bullets, but
rather steps towards increasing the
body’s ability to fight off deadly patho-
gens. With a vaccine on the horizon, it is
tempting to believe that the end of the
pandemic is in sight. But there is a long
road ahead. If we anticipate the chal-
lenges and move in a co-ordinated fash-
ion, we will benefit from the freedoms
restored by these innovative vaccines
more quickly.
The writer is chief executive of Sanofi
18 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES Friday 20 November 2020

EU banks/M&A: parish politics

Central bankers and analysts hope takeovers will raise efficiency. EU banks have woeful returns on equity
but they have made progress in reducing non-performing loans.

Estimated French/Italian merger synergies

Twitter: @FTLex
Joyy/Baidu:
fake it till you make it
Counterfeit goods have long caused
problems for China’s ecommerce
goliaths. Now fake users may be the
issue for a local video streaming
company, YY Live, according to
allegations by short seller Muddy
Waters. YY Live is controlled by
Nasdaq-listed Joyy. These charges have
wider implications.
Questions about tech companies and
fake accounts are not exclusive to
China. In the US, Facebook’s own
estimates suggest duplicate accounts
represent about 11 per cent of monthly
active users and fake versions another
5 per cent. When adjusted for those,
user number growth is much lower.
Chinese social media company Joyy
has become the latest target of
criticism due to YY. The US short seller
run by Carson Block has called it a
fraud, claiming it has fake transactions
and fake users, and uses bots (which
act like human users). Joyy denied the
report, which it says demonstrates a
lack of understanding of the industry.
Joyy’s shares still fell 26 per cent.
That could be a problem for Baidu,
China’s version of Google, which agreed
to buy YY for $3.6bn this week. YY’s ad
revenues and sales from virtual items
in the platform — rather than its 4m
user base — may have been the main
attraction. But for streaming
companies, it is user numbers that
drive ad revenue growth and profits.
YY’s $1.8bn in revenues and its outlook
would suffer should the claims be true.
The wider problem is that these
allegations bring the entire industry’s
business model into question, and
threaten rivals such as ByteDance’s
Douyin, Momo and DouYu. Shares of
the latter two companies fell 5 per cent.
For Baidu, any benefits from the YY
purchase were already questionable.
YY’s growth is slowing. Yet Baidu has
offered a 34 per cent premium for it.
Moreover, YY will struggle to catch
competitors such as Douyin and
Tencent-backed Bilibili — which have
long-established market positions.
Worse, Baidu’s Netflix-style video
streaming platform iQiyi has already
been targeted by short sellers earlier
this year. Allegations, which it has
denied, include overstating its user
numbers and inflating revenues.
Muddy Waters’ accusations may
prove a blessing in disguise for Baidu
and its shareholders. Baidu has already
lost out in the fashion for live
streaming. It should save the cash set
aside for YY and use it to buy into the
next new trend instead.
Cineworld:
cliffhanger
James Bond comes out of the
unlikeliest of situations on top. Cinema
chain Cineworld will need some of the
screen spy’s luck to escape its own
knife-edge predicament. Implementing
a company voluntary arrangement, a
UK-style accommodation with
creditors, would buy it some time. But
Cineworld’s capital structure, like the
womanising, boozing Bond of old, is a
relic of a bygone age.
If Cineworld pursues a CVA, it would
be a significant moment. The cinema
chain would become one of the UK’s
first large, previously viable businesses
to send this signal of financial distress
because of the pandemic. Any future
lockdowns would mean Cineworld
were not the last.
The qualification is that the group
had been pursuing a risky growth
strategy under brothers Mooky and
Israel Greidinger. Debt soared as it
acquired US chain Regal for $3.6bn in
2018. Covenants on more than $4bn of
bank loans are expected to be breached
in December. Vaccines offer hope of a
speedier return to normality. But big
audiences will take time to return.
Cineworld has enough liquidity to
hobble into next year. Reserves were
about $250m at the end of September,
think S&P credit analysts. A burn rate
of $50m per month during lockdowns
may be pushed lower via CVA savings.
A more immediate problem is a lack
of new films. Big releases such as the
new James Bond film have been pushed
back. Studios are now less willing to
invest, keeping cinemas shut when
they might otherwise reopen.
Movie studios are also renegotiating
“theatrical windows” to take advantage
of streaming demand. Universal has
slashed this period of exclusivity to just
17 days for cinema chain AMC.
Shareholders will probably be called
on to get Cineworld in line with the
new realities. Further borrowing would
compound the problems. An equity
value of just over £600m ($815m)
Gross estimates for 2022 (€bn)
BNP Paribas + Société Générale
BNP Paribas + Crédit Agricole
Intesa San Paolo + UniCredit
Crédit Agricole + Société Générale
BNP Paribas + UniCredit
Crédit Agricole + UniCredit
UniCredit + Société Générale
Intesa San Paolo + Société Générale
BNP Paribas + Intesa San Paolo
Crédit Agricole + Intesa San Paolo
Source: Mediobanca Securities
Return on equity of EU credit institutions
Average in Q2 2020 (%)
-5 -4 -3 -2
France
Germany
Netherlands
EU
Belgium
Italy
Portugal
Greece
Spain
FT graphic Source: ECB
Banking is the sick sector of Europe.
EU lenders struggle to make returns
that beat capital costs. A wave of
takeovers would forge regional
champions with lower overheads,
higher profitability and greater
resilience, say proponents such as the
European Central Bank. A flurry of
deals, featuring Spanish banks such
as BBVA and worth some €30bn if
they complete, has revived hopes of
wider consolidation.
Europe’s banks show how limited
progress has been towards a single
market in financial services. The
continent has many multinationals,
but lending remains a mainly local
affair. The top five banks have just
20 per cent of the market, half the
figure for the US. Companies that
means a rights issue is still possible.
The size required is likely to leave
shareholders both shaken and stirred.
Thyssenkrupp:
wunder skint
You could have heard a €17bn elevator
drop. Thyssenkrupp, the ailing German
steel and materials group, is guiding for
a net loss of €1bn this financial year
and reckons on a free cash outflow of
€1.5bn. About 5,000 more jobs, making
a total of 11,000, face the chop.
The former titan of German industry
sold off its profitable elevators business
to private equity duo Advent and
Cinven for €17.2bn this year. It was
always going to struggle to make 2021
0 0.5 1.0
EU non-performing loans*
Non-performing loans
-1 0 1 2 Total loans
(€tn)
25
20
15
10
5
0 2.4
Jun Sep
Source: ECB 2019
compete globally need banks that do
the same, argues Andrea Filtri of
Mediobanca. He estimates a couple of
big mergers would cut costs by more
than €4bn a year, raising earnings per
share by one quarter to two-fifths.
Franco-Italian tie-ups often feature
in fantasy M&A. A merger between
UniCredit and Société Générale has
been mooted. A combination between
the Italian lender and BNP Paribas
might produce a better European
champion. Throw Crédit Agricole,
Intesa Sanpaolo and Banco BPM into
the mix. Parallel deals then become
possible, undercutting disputes over
which country is colonising the other.
Consolidation is easy on a
spreadsheet. The list of real-world
obstacles is lengthy. Fragmented
numbers stack up. Last year,
discontinued elevator operations
produced €15.7bn of ebit. That is about
three times as much as continuing
businesses lost.
The pandemic has exacerbated the
group’s woes — heavy industry goes by
the wayside when recession looms —
but is not the root cause. Once a
champion of Germany’s postwar
Wirtschaftswunder, or economic
miracle, Thyssenkrupp is shrinking to
survive. By peeling off units it bolsters
the balance sheet — at year end it had
€5bn net cash and more than €10bn of
equity — at the cost of cash flow from a
depleting portfolio.
Thyssenkrupp, which also has hefty
pension liabilities, faces two challenges:
finding buyers and turning the
remaining units into a cohesive and
1.5 2.0 2.5
Non-performing loans ratio
(%)
3.6
3.2
2.8
Dec Mar Jun
2020 *Excludes UK
regulation looms as large as national
rivalries. Banks have to hoard capital
locally, even when operations are
pan-European. There is no single
deposit guarantee scheme. The
resolution regime is full of loopholes.
Moreover, low rates hobble EU
banks more than the inefficiencies
that mergers are meant to fix. Citi’s
Stefan Nedialkov says rates account
for two-thirds of the 600 basis point
gap between the average return on
tangible equity of European banks
and US regional peers.
If EU politicians and central
bankers want EU banking
champions, they must create an
environment that breeds them. Until
then, consolidation of the Spanish
variety will begin and end at home.
profitable business. It was struggling to
do so even before the pandemic hit.
There was the abortive merger of the
steel unit with Tata Steel for one;
antitrust regulators quashed that.
Restructuring was hampered by a
string of chief executives. The group
has had three bosses in just over a year.
Current incumbent Martina Merz is
pursuing a dual-track strategy on the
steel business that includes retaining it
as a standalone unit.
Battered shares were down 5 per cent
in late trade yesterday. Increased
capital spending and restructuring
costs will take a toll. The dividend is
toast and investors are on notice that,
even if the losses are narrowing, the
multinational is on course for another
cash-haemorrhaging year. Stand clear
of the closing doors.
Google Pay:
checks and balances
Google wants to know more about your
personal finances. Not content with
dominating the global search and
search advertising market, the tech
mammoth is rolling out a new version
of its Google Pay app. It will let users
transfer funds, manage their budgets
and — starting next year — even open a
bank account with 11 participating
banks. It is Venmo, Apple Pay and Mint
all rolled into one.
It is certainly an ambitious move. But
the timing is awkward. Big Tech is
under intense scrutiny by regulators in
the US and abroad these days. The
justice department hit Google with an
antitrust lawsuit just last month. Its
latest push into consumer finance will
do little to reassure watchdogs already
wary of Google’s clout.
Like other tech companies, Google
sees payments as a way to embed itself
even more deeply in users’ lives. But
while Google Pay — or Android Pay, as
it was initially called — has been
around since 2015, it lags behind Apple
Pay when it comes to getting folks to
use their smartphone for purchases.
Five years after its launch, it has 150m
users in 30 countries. A report by
Juniper Research last year estimates
Apple Pay will have 227m users
worldwide this year.
Nevertheless digital and contactless
payments have exploded in popularity
since spring as the coronavirus
changed how consumers think about
payment. It is not just more people
doing their shopping online. Use of
peer-to-peer payment services — such
as those provided by PayPal’s Venmo —
are up sharply as people use it to pay
each other rent or split bills.
Commercially, Google cannot be
faulted for bulking up its Google Pay
app offerings to lure in more users. But
some of the new functions to come —
including an option that allows the app
to trawl through your Gmail inbox and
Google photo accounts to look for
receipts — come across as invasive
rather than practical. Google does not
need to give regulators any more
reasons to worry.
Lex on the web
For notes on today’s breaking
stories go to www.ft.com/lex

CROSSWORD
No 16,639 Set by BRADMAN
        ACROSS
9 In widespread disease there’s little right
  regarding protective layer (9)
10 One dealing with a letter? (5)
11 How pork may be cooked, might you
say? I have the knowledge (7)
12 Commander leading American
  organisation that seems to be
everywhere (7)
13 Dick, the first person to be heard (3)
14 Shops now deal with this less often --
    minor reform (5,6)
17, 18, 19 Hesitater Ken’s transformed and
seizes control (5,3,5)
21 Sozzled priest left in heap – “batty” type
(11)
   
23 Tents maybe ending out in river (3)
25 Inferior worker meeting a king’s
daughter (7)
27 Sultan demands healthy food at home
    (7)
28 Period of work that’s quiet on one
newspaper (5)
29 Festival with loveless emperor who
   dwells in oriental region? (9)
DOWN
1 Tiger maybe needing iron on course (6)
2 Talk incorrectly as Bakewell’s beauty
queen? (8)
  3 More than one surveyor goes wrong –
stop to intervene (10)
4 Measure allowing soldiers to imprison
this writer (4)
5 One may signal the end of class struggle
for youngsters (6,4)
6 Stairway ultimately needing a form of
cover (4)
JOTTER PAD 7 Call doctor and suggest dropping drug
(4,2)
8 Administrators providing support
without and within (8)
15 Acts in sequence – talents are wasted
(10)
16 Nasty little creatures making comment
about Pegasus (10)
17 Spit disgustingly on special site, being
Solution 16,638 more drunk than everyone else? (8)
20 Innocent number released, having
6 . , / / 6 ( 7 / , 9 ( / <
1 ( 4 + $ $ 2
secured identity in disturbance? (8)
& ( ) $ / 8 ( 1 9 , 6 $ * ( 22 Bird short of breath? Not good (6)
/ 9 ( / , $ 24 Something mucky and something hairy
) / 8 ( $ 7 0 2 6 3 + ( 5 ( outside ancient city (6)
6 . $ + 2 , 26 Mention something used alongside 14?
$ / + $ 0 % 5 $ 7 $ 7 ,
8 / < 1 2 ( +
(4)
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