Andy Mukherjee on debt funds, Franklin Templeton and the regulatory mess that is about to get a whole lot worse:
Back then, Franklin Templeton’s unit holders probably had no idea their fund manager was sitting on practically the entire stock of zero-coupon debentures issued by Yes Capital Ltd., one of Kapoor family’s private investment vehicles. That was long before Yes, a major deposit-taking institution, became a basket case that was eventually rescued by a consortium led by government-controlled State Bank of India. The five funds that were involved in lending to Kapoor are among the six that have been suspended, suggesting that nothing really changed between then and now
Kurzarbeit. My word for the day. (I really should learn German)
He said Germany’s “Kurzarbeit,” or “short-time work,” program during the current pandemic has similarly set an example as to how deal with this economic crisis.
Under Germany’s system workers are sent home or see their hours slashed but are paid around two-thirds of their salary by the state.
China, India: follow the money!
Since 2014, an influx of Chinese capital in India has transformed the structure of India’s trade and investment relations with China. Until that year, the net Chinese investment in India was US$1.6 billion, according to official figures. Most of the investment was in the infrastructure space, involving major Chinese players in this sector, predominantly state-owned enterprises (SOEs). In the next three years, total investment increased five-fold to at least US$8 billion, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) in Beijing, with a noticeable shift from state-driven to market-driven investment from the Chinese private sector.
Bill Gates simplifies the development of the vaccine for all of us:
Safety and efficacy are the two most important goals for every vaccine. Safety is exactly what it sounds like: is the vaccine safe to give to people? Some minor side effects (like a mild fever or injection site pain) can be acceptable, but you don’t want to inoculate people with something that makes them sick.
Efficacy measures how well the vaccine protects you from getting sick. Although you’d ideally want a vaccine to have 100 percent efficacy, many don’t. For example, this year’s flu vaccine is around 45 percent effective.
TLTRO’s explained (this is a great read!)
A capital starved NBFC world will see churn, but sometimes the lack of capital itself will cause a company to fold, even if it has good credit. The RBI action for TLTRO may be good to create some liquidity for some NBFCs, but the system itself is weak and it may eventually need the RBI itself to step up and take some of the risk. A simple rule can be: We’ll fund you Rs. 100 as debt if you can raise Rs. 50 as additional equity capital from the market. But for now, we have TLTROs.
EconForEverybody 