Jul 15, 2020

The Covid-19 crisis caused one the most severe financial market turmoil of the last hundred years. A historic slump was followed by a historic rally.

Jul 09, 2020

The light and targeted lockdowns to fight the second wave of Covid-19 infections will constrain the pace of recovery. We expect global GDP to contract by -4.7% in 2020, followed by growth of +4.8% in 2021.

Jul 08, 2020

The UK intends to lower its global import tariff by -2.2pp to 2.8% post its EU exit, the second lowest tariff among G-20 countries after Australia. These new tariffs will apply to imported goods from countries with which the UK will not have a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on 01 January 2021.

Jul 03, 2020

In China, financial and monetary conditions are clearly easing, as measured by our credit impulse index: as of May 2020, it stood at 6.0pp, up from 1.9pp at the end of 2019. However, the PBOC’s stance appears to be much more prudent compared to other major economies.

Jul 01, 2020

The global insurance industry entered 2020 in good shape: In 2019, premiums increased by 4.4%, the strongest growth in four years. 2020 will be different: Premium income is expected to shrink by 4.7% in Western Europe and by 3.8% globally – compared with the pre-Covid-19 trend, around EUR 360bn in premiums will have gone missing

Jun 30, 2020

The Covid-19 crisis is morphing into a payment crisis as companies tend to protect their working capital by paying their suppliers late. Defaults and insolvencies loom ahead. Companies need to understand structural payment patterns to help them triage bad payers from the good ones in finding their way back to growth.