WSJ

Did ESG Help Sink SVB?

19. März 2023 By pwirth in International, Kapitalanlagen Tags: WSJ

WSJ. If government funds it, they will come. That’s an overlooked story line in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. If Washington wants to point fingers, it should aim the biggest digit at itself.

Let’s talk about what actually imploded over the past week. If the name wasn’t already a giveaway, SVB was the lender of choice for tech dreamers. It claims to have banked nearly half of all U.S. venture-backed tech and healthcare startups. Yet in recent years those clients have skewed ever more in one direction. “We serve those creating positive environmental change,” SVB’s website brags, noting that the bank worked with some 1,550 companies in the “climate technology and sustainability sector.”

UK: The Blame Game

14. Oktober 2022 By pwirth in International Tags: GB, WSJ

Das Wallstreet Journal sieht die primäre Ursache für die katastrophale Lage der britischen Pension Funds nicht bei der Politik von PM Liz Truss, sondern bei jener der Bank of England und der meisten anderen Zentralbanken. Das Blatt schreibt:

What isn’t responsible for this panic, by the way, is tax policy. Conventional wisdom now blames Prime Minister Liz Truss’s tax-cutting plan, announced on Sept. 23, for the pension blowup. That announcement may have lit a match near the pension bomb’s fuse if it momentarily spooked investors, but plenty of other sparks were in the air. A pension crisis was all but inevitable as interest-rate increases created new stresses for hedging strategies.

WSJ: Das ganze Elend mit den Negativzinsen

21. Mai 2019 By pwirth in Medien, Volkswirtschaft Tags: Negativzinsen, WSJ

Das Wallstreet Journal geht in einem ausführlichen Artikel auf die in Europa grassierenden Negativzinsen ein. Auch die Situation in der Schweiz wird beleuchtet.

Es bleibt bei unter Null. Capital Economics erwartet sogar, dass im kommenden Jahr die SNB auf –1% geht.

The negative-rate policy’s ineffectualness is a sign of just how weak Europe’s economic engines are, and how vulnerable. The policy threatens pensions, creates the risk of real-estate bubbles and doesn’t fully quell the specter of deflation. European banks struggle with weak interest income and thin margins on loans, putting them behind American peers in profitability and making it harder for them to finance the economy.

Public frustration is mounting in healthy countries such as Germany and Switzerland that don’t necessarily need negative rates, while those that do aren’t seeing much benefit. Profitless companies stay afloat, steering resources away from more efficient ones and weighing on productivity. Central banks’ inability to raise rates leaves them with little ammunition to cushion the next downturn with the conventional tool of interest-rate reductions.

Funds Back Proposal to Remove Zuckerberg as Facebook Chairman

17. Oktober 2018 By pwirth in International, Kapitalanlagen Tags: WSJ

Several public funds with holdings in Facebook Inc.,including New York City’s pension funds, are backing a shareholder proposal to push out Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg as chairman of the social-media giant’s board of directors.

The state treasurers of Rhode Island, Illinois and Pennsylvania, as well as the New York City comptroller are joining the shareholder proposal previously filed by Trillium Asset Management in June, the officials said in a release on Wednesday.

The announcement has no practical effect on Mr. Zuckerberg and his position as both CEO and chairman because he has a lock on the bulk of Facebook’s supervoting shares, each of which gives him 10 times the votes of average shareholders. According to Facebook’s latest proxy, his share of the voting power among Facebook investors was 59.9%.

Still, the news heightens scrutiny of the company’s corporate governance after a string of missteps and controversies, and reflects a view among some investors that Mr. Zuckerberg needs additional support guiding the company.

WSJ

Pension Funds’ Dilemma: What to Buy When Nothing Is Cheap?

2. Januar 2018 By pwirth in International, Kapitalanlagen, Medien Tags: USA, WSJ

The largest U.S. public pension fund debated in December whether to sell more than $50 billion in stocks as global markets raced higher. But in the end, the board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System decided it was fine to hold more.

Retirement systems that manage money for firefighters, police officers, teachers and other public workers aren’t pulling back on costly bets at a time when markets are rising around the world.

Some public pension funds are adding to traditional allocations of stocks and bonds while both are expensive. Others are loading up on more private-equity or real-estate holdings that are less liquid and sometimes carry high fees.

How much risk to take is a question facing all investors as they enter 2018. «Everything is overvalued,” said Wilshire Consulting President Andrew Junkin, who advises public pension funds. “There’s no magic option out there.”

Wallstreet Journal