The stock market’s longstanding skepticism about official real-estate valuations just got fresh support from a jumbo writedown at one of Britain’s biggest mall and office operators. Hammerson Plc’s results are yet again catching up with its depressed share price. The company resisted a takeover bid in 2018 by pointing out that its reported net asset value was higher than the ...

One of the trendiest ideas in finance is something called “social impact investing,” which is the idea that people should put more money into socially beneficial companies and products, and less into socially harmful ones. That hardly sounds objectionable, but I am skeptical about how much good social impact investing can do. The first risk is that social impact investing ...

Bloomberg The first US coronavirus death. Signs the disease is squeezing China’s economy. A possible outbreak in Washington State. Trading may have stopped, but the drumbeat of alarming headlines hasn’t. That’s making investors anxious about what happens when markets reopen. While considerable bad news has already been priced in to stocks, with the S&P 500 down 13% in seven sessions ...

Bloomberg Last week was an expensive one for most investors, even for billionaires. The combined fortunes of the world’s 500 richest people fell by $444 billion as the coronavirus continued to spread — and spread fear — rattling equity markets worldwide. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled more than 12%, the biggest five-day slide since the depths of the 2008 ...

Bloomberg The world economy may be heading for its worst performance since the financial crisis more than a decade ago as the spread of the coronavirus increasingly dashes hopes of a swift rebound. Just weeks since most economists bet the China-led slump would quickly reverse once the virus was contained, many are rethinking that optimism as swathes of Chinese factories ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump said it was “about time” the Federal Reserve acted like a “leader” and lowered interest rates, whether such a move was related to the coronavirus-driven stock market plunge or not. “If you look at the Fed, it has a massive impact, lots of it is psychological and lots of it is fact,” Trump said at a ...

Bloomberg India’s central bank may follow up on its generous funding offer to banks with another unconventional measure as it seeks to boost lending to the real economy. The authority may unveil another European Central Bank-(ECB) styled facility called Targeted Longer-Term Refinancing Operations to expand credit to businesses and households, after concluding an ongoing program to lend $14 billion at ...

Bloomberg For a government with a lot of debt, timing is everything when it comes to embarking on a fiscal splurge, according to research by the European Central Bank (ECB). Interest rates at the effective lower bound can enhance the impact of a public-spending shock on the economy and largely mute debt-sustainability concerns, Niccolo Battistini and Giovanni Callegari wrote in ...

Bloomberg South Africa’s rand headed for a near-four-year low, stocks entered a correction and bonds slumped as concerns about a looming credit-rating downgrade to junk compounded fears about the effect of the coronavirus on the country’s economy. The stampede away from risk assets hammered commodities from oil to copper and iron, driving the Bloomberg Commodity Index to a 33-year low ...

Bloomberg Citigroup Inc expanded restrictions on employee business travel this week as the coronavirus continued its spread around the world, according to people familiar with the matter. The bank added Italy to the list of countries off-limits to employees after restricting travel to and from Asia for the last several weeks, the people said, asking not to be named discussing ...