North America

Will it be back to business as usual as soon as lockdown restrictions are lifted?

Companies never want to sell equity at rock bottom prices, but bank lenders will often only relax covenants and hold off seizing assets if new capital comes in below them. Enter private equity managers with dry powder, snapping up big preferred stock deals to help cash-strapped issuers bolster their capital structures.

Appetite for Special Purpose Acquisition Companies is growing as investors find comfort in their new structure. Market participants expect more to come this year along thematic lines, with the first ESG Spac launched in May.

Central bank intervention has delayed the deluge of insolvency that Covid-19 lockdowns will cause, but it can only plug the dike for so long. Lenders face the grim prospect of deciding who to save and who to let go.

JPMorgan is in discussion with more global banks, corporates and third-party service providers to join its Interbank Information Network.

Bank of America has seen mandates increase in the last month as digital solutions become increasingly important to overcome isolation and social-distancing rules.

Accounting standards that make banks provision upfront for all expected loan losses are encouraging exactly what regulators don’t want to happen at this stage of the coronavirus crisis.

Liquidity data from CLS has revealed unusual trading activity around the 4pm London fix – but it has more to do with corporate inertia than market manipulation.

Revolvers could be the debt Achilles heel of cash-strapped corporates.

After brief illnesses, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon and Morgan Stanley’s James Gorman were back on form in this month’s earnings calls.

Some parts of US investment bank earnings in the first quarter of the year looked more like boom than bust as record trading and debt issuance helped offset weakness elsewhere. Now the banks are building reserves to prepare for coming out of lockdown

Sell-side research is integrating alternative data to navigate the current coronavirus crisis. It’s the future for bank research, but it’s not an easy transition.

Alternative data can tell in near real time the story of economic and financial market disruption now playing out, but asset managers need artificial intelligence to read it.

Bank scraps share buyback and postpones dividend decision as COO Arana warns lack of fiscal response from the government risks deeper decline.

JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon has had a good start to the Covid-19 crisis, while his Goldman Sachs counterpart David Solomon is faltering.

Green bond issuance slows in market turmoil, while social bonds offer means to finance Covid-19 responses.

Global cash managers are having to move fast and adapt solutions to support clients through the Covid-19 crisis.

The coronavirus Covid-19 crisis has highlighted the need to build better consumer financial resilience – bank efforts to support personal savings and debt reduction will have a greater impact than writing cheques.

Smaller asset managers and hedge funds that went into the cloud for trading may be better off than big banks that spent billions on proprietary server-based infrastructure.

With offices deserted across the world as coronavirus takes its toll, a virtual dataroom and online M&A software service company may be more relevant than ever

For a sector reeling from money laundering scandals, it’s tempting to imagine that technology could be a low-cost way of solving such problems. AI could be a game changer for detecting low-level crime, but corporate-scale laundromats will remain tough to crack.

Banks came into the coronavirus pandemic much stronger than they went into the global financial crisis, but will the capital and liquidity buffers they have built be sufficient to see them through the most dramatic economic crash in history?

Private lending vehicles that are structured to maximize fees are looking dangerously fragile, and mismarking of asset values could spark legal disputes.

The world’s community banks, credit unions and CDFIs have been taking concrete action to help their clients, communities and employees respond to the coronavirus Covid-19 crisis.

The Federal Reserve’s expanded bond buying commitment underscores that the safest hedge at the moment is a security that can be sold to a government.

Digital asset manager Wave Financial may have found just the right moment to launch its whiskey fund.

Warren Buffett can take his pick from public companies with beaten down stock prices at the moment, but he may be interested in buying privately held Bloomberg.

Investors, governments and central bankers are using new sources of data to understand the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Fed has provided abundant financial support to the core government bond markets to little effect and may now need to ease rules on dealer banks.

In giving aid to the US, the Jack Ma Foundation has an important message for Trump: close borders to contain a virus, not to contain China.