Deutsche Bank’s Top Money Maker Takes Big Risks and Earns Billions in Singapore – Bloomberg — www.bloomberg.com
Highlights:
– Shah may not be a household name on Wall Street, but his global financing and credit trading group pulls in an estimated 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) annually, accounting for about a third of revenue for the entire investment-banking division, people familiar with the matter said
– Under Shah’s leadership, Deutsche Bank has cemented its role as one of the world’s biggest credit traders. His global empire includes the distressed-debt trading business that has long been a strength of Germany’s biggest bank.
– Lower taxes are also a draw for many bankers, as Singapore’s top marginal income tax rate of 22% is less than half the level of Germany.
– Shah’s team provides the high-risk credit, sometimes back-stopped by derivatives that have so far kept losses to a minimum. The hedges offer credit protection for the loans provided by Deutsche Bank, often to cash-strapped yet asset-rich Asian entrepreneurs.
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Supply Chain Crisis Has Central Banks Facing Stagflation Lite – Bloomberg — www.bloomberg.com
Highlights:
– Central banks, already retreating from their view that inflation is “transitory,” may be forced to counter rising prices with earlier-than-expected interest-rate hikes.
– Producers have been caught off-guard by this year’s rebound after they slashed orders of materials last year when consumers stopped spending.
– Pulling all these pieces together, the Bloomberg Economics supply indexes show shortages just off a 20-year high in the U.S. Gauges for the U.K. and euro area are at a similarly elevated level.
– Apple said it lost $6 billion in sales because of its inability to meet demand and could lose more next quarter.
– Shipping conditions should start to ease after the Chinese New Year in early February, “although disruptions could last at least till the middle of next year,” said Shanella Rajanayagam, a trade economist at HSBC.
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Dubai Billionaire Sajwani Ups Damac Offer Amid Investor Backlash – Bloomberg — www.bloomberg.com
Highlights:
– Sajwani’s bid is the latest in a string of similar deals in the United Arab Emirates which sought to buy out minority shareholders at a discount. Emaar Properties PJSC said in March it will effectively delist one of its units for about two-thirds of its original public-offering price. Late last year, government-controlled Meraas Holding LLC proposed taking DXB Entertainments private at a 33% discount.
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Saudi Arabia Eyes 7,000 Global Firms as Dubai Rivalry Heats Up – Bloomberg — www.bloomberg.com
Highlights:
– Officials are talking to major companies with annual revenues of a billion dollars or more, Al-Rasheed said, with the aim of getting 480 of them to set up in Saudi Arabia by 2030. Around half the companies that received their permits this week had already signed agreements in January to relocate regional headquarters to Riyadh.
– The carrots are paired with a stick: From the start of 2024, the government and state-backed institutions will stop signing contracts with foreign companies that base their Middle East headquarters elsewhere in the region.
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Living at AlJurf
Find Out More About Living at AlJurf
AlJurf Gardens harnesses nature’s raw beauty and combines it with refined heritage-inspired architecture and contemporary design to present a sanctuary of wellness and calm.
Throughout the villa spaces, the refined and controlled raw beauty of nature is repeated in different scales, to showcase its exquisiteness across every typology of homes, gardens and courtyards.
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Saudi Aramco Raises Oil Prices Sharply After OPEC+ Defies Biden – Bloomberg — www.bloomberg.com
Highlights:
– Analysts expect the oil market to remain under-supplied over the rest of the year following the decision by OPEC+, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia.
– The continued supply curbs from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and partners have helped oil prices surge 60% this year to more than $80 a barrel. This month, BP Plc said global oil demand had surpassed 100 million barrels a day for the first time since the pandemic started.
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Why We Should All Start Talking About ‘Whackflation’ – Bloomberg
Highlights:
– The global pandemic initially sparked a collapse in demand for goods, which led retailers to pull back on ordering and factories to reduce output. As consumer demand began recovering, retailers and factories struggled to meet it. Put simply, they didn’t expect the impact of the big whack to turn back just like that, and have been struggling to balance supply and demand ever since.
– It’s that potential to suddenly change the system’s behavior, this inelastic linkage of supply and demand,” says King. “As we see these potential shifts again, I think that the possibility that they end up rippling or cascading through the economy and are more lasting” is significant.
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Palm Oil Destroys Rainforests But World Not Buying Sustainable Crop — www.bloomberg.com
Highlights:
– It has always been the understanding and sort of verbal promise that if growers produce certified sustainable palm oil under the RSPO, there will be a market for it,” Bek-Nielsen said. But “people and many large consumer goods manufacturers, including retailers in Europe, are not willing to pay for it.”
– Palm oil is cheap, abundant and probably the most versatile crop produced by large-scale farming.
– The oil and its derivatives can appear in a list of ingredients under more than 200 names, according to the environmental group Orangutan Alliance. Pick up any packaged item in a supermarket and there’s about a 50 percent chance it’s got palm oil in it.
– Palm oil contributes to global warming as forests are cleared to make way for oil palm plantations,” says Matt Piotrowski, Director of Policy and Research at Climate Advisers.
– In 2004, the RSPO was created to bring growers, traders, consumer goods makers, retailers, banks and environmental groups together to try to find a way to make the industry sustainable and to halt deforestation, said Chandran.
– The RSPO estimates that just over 19 million tons of global supply is certified sustainable, meaning that about 81% of world production isn’t.
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