There can be no doubt that swift and decisive policymaker action saved markets and economies a lot of pain in 2020. Moving into a new and hopefully less dispiriting year, a big question is whether the best means of cultivating a fragile recovery is really to continue trying to force credit indiscriminately down the throats of business and household sectors that are certainly not crying out for it.
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KangaNews hosted its annual roundtable discussion for Australia’s leading bank fixed-income strategists in March amid a fast-changing world. While inflation, interest rates and geopolitical risk are on the rise, financial markets are not yet in crisis territory. The strategists agree Australia is in relatively sound financial shape as the world moves into a higher rates regime.
ESG to the fore as New Zealand business emerges from the pandemic
The agenda at the KangaNews New Zealand Debt Capital Market Summit in December 2021 included a panel of high-level local corporate executives who discussed how business responded to the challenges of the pandemic and the future outlook. Sustainability is playing an increasing role in corporate strategy.
New Zealand’s banks resilient despite lingering uncertainty
New Zealand’s banks are returning to a more normal business environment but the spectre of the pandemic remains. At the KangaNews New Zealand Debt Capital Markets Summit in December 2021, Daniel Yu, senior analyst at Moody’s Investors Service in Sydney, broke down some of the key themes the rating agency expects the country’s banks to face over the next 12 months and their credit quality.
The economic arc of recent history
Having celebrated his 30th anniversary with Westpac Banking Corporation in 2021, chief economist Bill Evans is in a unique position to view the challenges facing markets and economies thanks to his deep understanding of how they have responded to comparable events in the past. Evans speaks to KangaNews about the economic outlook, the wealth trade-off between wage earners and asset owners, the risk of deglobalisation and how sustainability is factoring in to his forecasting.