Sep 09, 2021

Japan’s life industry as a whole has weathered the long yield winter remarkable well, staying profitable in an environment where interest rates and growth basically disappeared. Yet, we find that there is still some room for improvement within the local market, namely consolidation, even as life insurers start to hunt for growth overseas, mainly in Asia and China, arguably the biggest opportunity in the sector.

Sep 08, 2021

European exporters, and France in particular, have lost significant market share over the past two decades as China emerged as a global exporter for manufactured goods. China’s remarkable export expansion has coincided with the dramatic decline of France’s export shares since 2001: -1.7pp, compared to -1.3pp in Germany and -1.1pp in Italy.

Sep 02, 2021

Despite the roaring return of inflation in H2 2021, the ECB should not flinch at next week’s policy meeting. In particular, it should refrain from taking an unneccesary bet on how the pandemic, the economy and yields (and in turn US monetary policy) will develop over the next quarter by pre-committing to a lower PEPP purchase pace.

Sep 01, 2021

In 2020, state support overcompensated for the Covid-19 shock, reducing the number of fragile SMEs by more than 8,000 in Germany, France and the UK. Yet, we find that 7%, 13% and 15% of SMEs in the three countries are still at risk of insolvency in the next four years.

Jul 30, 2021

The strong rebound in European Q2 GDP growth highlights that there is significant room to grow in the sectors most exposed to Covid-19 restrictions. We expect unleashed pent-up demand to provide a boost to these sectors through 2021, especially in Spain, France and Belgium.

Jul 28, 2021

Demographic change poses a formidable challenge for Australia: Despite only a modest increase in the old-age dependency ratio, the number of people aged 65 and older will almost double from 4.1mn today to 7.4mn within the next 30 years.