Tag Archives: World Affairs: Features

Is the U.S. housing recovery still on firm footing? Your view on that will depend on which indicators you choose to believe. For the optimists: New home sales spiked 16.6 percent to 619,000 in April, the highest level recorded since early 2008, while the latest data from the Case-Shiller 20-City Composite Home Price Index shows that prices are 5.4 percent higher in the country’s major cities than they were a year ago. And for the pessimists: April housing starts, though up 6.6 percent...

This year, all the world’s a stage…for mergers and acquisitions. So far in 2016, cross-border M&A has made up about 45 percent of total deal-making volume, well above the historical average of about 30 percent, Robin Rankin, Credit Suisse’s Co-head of Global Mergers and Acquisitions, noted at a recent M&A panel discussion hosted by the Milken Institute.   A recent survey of executives in 45 countries suggests that there are more cross-border deals to come. The...

With 6 percent GDP growth forecast for this year, up from 4.8 percent in 2015, “Sri Lanka is on the move,” the country’s Finance Minister, Ravi Karunanayake, said in a keynote address at the Credit Suisse 2016 Asian Investment Conference (AIC).   Since a new president and prime minister took office at the beginning of 2015, the government has worked to get the country back onto a path of strong economic growth, Karunanayake said. “It was necessary for fiscal consolidation to take...

The global economy struggled through a difficult year in 2015, leaving a range of challenges for policymakers hoping to avoid a third leg of the financial crisis, panelists at the Credit Suisse 2016 Asian Investment Conference (AIC) said.   The Federal Reserve’s moderation in monetary tightening is crucial to sustaining fragile global economic growth in 2016, while structural reforms in China, India, and other countries are essential if struggling emerging economies are to regain their...

Consumers in emerging economies can be forgiven for having a less than rosy outlook these days. Currency weakness, market volatility, and in some countries, political risk, drove declines in consumer sentiment throughout much of the developing world in 2015, according to the Credit Suisse Research Institute’s 2016 Emerging Consumer Survey. In the long-term, however, consumption in the emerging world is still a growth story – one driven by an emerging middle class and optimistic young...

Greece’s crisis is fiscal, monetary, and structural, exacerbated by political and social volatility, stresses on European unity, and now, a large influx of refugees. Despite this “nightmare” and major near-term concerns, former Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras believes that “we can and will make it’.   The Greeks have faced a unique and debilitating confluence of challenges – excessive deficits and debt, diminishing competitiveness, increasing non-performing loans, political...

Jonathan Wilmot, Credit Suisse’s Head of Macro Investments, Asset Management, looks at three past crises of capitalism – in the 1890s, the 1930s and the most recent one in 2007 – and shows that previous pre-crisis financial and economic conditions are not apparent today. His conclusion: Policy matters.   Is the world going back into crisis? “It comes down to policy and whether policy rises to the challenges we face right now,” Wilmot told participants in the opening session on April 6 at...

Given the comprehensive transformation it is undergoing, China’s economy is now much more complicated, said Christopher Balding, Associate Professor of Finance and Economics at the HSBC Business School of Peking University Graduate School, in a session on the Chinese economy at the Credit Suisse 2016 Asian Investment Conference (AIC). Volatility in the markets and concerns about debt and capital outflows have fueled questions about the outlook for China.   “Money is leaving in a very...

Quick: Name the Asian country whose cheap labor costs have attracted droves of foreign manufacturers, driving an explosion in export-driven economic activity that is now transitioning to more moderate, consumer-based growth. Did you say China? Vietnam would have been correct, too.   As labor costs have risen dramatically in China over the last several years, a growing number of manufacturers have moved operations from the Middle Kingdom to Vietnam or even decided to set up shop there...

What a difference an election can make. Just three months after Mauricio Macri became Argentina’s new president, the country is preparing to return to international debt markets for the first time in 15 years with a mid-April debt issuance of $11.68 billion. In lifting the long-standing injunctions that led Argentina to default in 2014, U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa noted that, “President Macri’s election changed everything.”   Argentina’s debt saga dates back to 2001, when the...