Speaking to Bloomberg Radio’s Caroline Hepker and Roger Hearing, John Denton – Secretary General of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) – discusses the impact of COVID-19 on the travel and tourism industries, particularly as fears of a second wave of the virus and tighter lockdown restrictions are threatening business continuity.

Denton explains that the travel industry has lost more than 120 million jobs around the world in this current crisis, with women making up more than half of those made unemployed and young people a third. He also elaborates on the need for teamwork among economies and globally consistent safety standards for passengers to revive the industry.

To listen to the full interview, please click here.

The US payments landscape is in the midst of significant change. A spark of new capabilities – including developments to existing payment rails, the dawn of real-time payments and the emergence of innovative overlay services – is transforming the entire payments ecosystem. What’s more, with the current challenging environment causing unprecedented disruption to manual processes, the value of moving away from paper-based payments towards faster, more streamlined digital alternatives has never been more apparent. With the stage set for the transition to digital, banks are being presented with the opportunity to revolutionise both payables and receivables for their clients.

As clients increasingly look to venture into the world of digital – leveraging tools including APIs, real-time payment capabilities and pre-validation technologies, Carl Slabicki, Head of Strategic Payment Solutions at BNY Mellon explores how banks must ensure that they can support the full breadth of client requirements.

Read the full article here

Writing for the Global Listed Infrastructure Organisation’s Journal (GLIO), Karl Nietvelt, Global Head of Analytical Excellence & Research, Global Infrastructure, at S&P Global Ratings, looks at how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the infrastructure asset class.

While infrastructure is known to be largely resilient to shocks, it is by no means immune. Certainly, as a result of the pandemic, credit quality within the sector has been tested to a greater extent than during the global financial crisis, with transportation infrastructure assets coming under considerable strain. Indeed, the sector has seen close to 10% of ratings downgraded in recent months, as volume decreases on an unprecedented scale and prospects for recovery remain uncertain.

The full article can be found here.

 

 

Speaking to Bloomberg, Eric Arnould, Global Head of Equity Capital Markets at Natixis, comments on Europe’s largest fundraising deals coming from bonds that can convert into equity and investors betting that the underlying stock will jump 50% or more in the next few years.

“Exposure to equity, coupled with volatile equity indexes and stabilization of credit spreads, is likely to spur even more convertible bond issuance in the second half of the year”, explains Arnould.

To read more, please click here.