Global ETF News Older than One Year
JSE announces ESG partnership with FTSE Russell
June 3, 2015--The Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Africa's leading exchange and the first emerging market and first stock exchange to form a Socially Responsible Investment Index (SRI Index) in 2004, today announced that from 2015
it is partnering with FTSE Russell, the global index provider, in progressing the JSE's work around promoting corporate sustainability practices over the last decade.
Source: Johannesburg Stock Exchange
Regulators scrutinise asset managers as bond holdings rise
June 3, 2015--Asset managers have increased bond holdings since the financial crisis, prompting regulators' concerns about consequences of a probable interest-rate increase by the US Federal Reserve.
Source: SmartBrief
Strengthening investment key to improving world economy's B-minus grade, says OECD
June 3, 2015--Global growth will gradually strengthen towards its pre-crisis trend rate by late 2016 as activity becomes more evenly shared across the major economies and overall external imbalances are less marked than in the run-up to 2007, according to the OECD's latest Economic Outlook.
Labour markets are gradually healing in the advanced economies and risks of deflation have receded.
But the global economy can be characterised as only achieving a muddling-through "B-minus" grade. Global growth in the first quarter of 2015 was weaker than in any quarter since the crisis. And although this softness is seen as transitory, productivity growth continues to disappoint, reflecting in part tepid business investment which has weakened the spread of new technologies.
view the OECD Economic Outlook, Volume 2015 Issue 1
Source: OECD
Energy Storage-The Next Big Source of Innovation
June 3, 2015--With solar and wind energies reaching the tipping point across the world, the next big source of innovation is storing the energy that these intermittent technologies produce.
Once energy can be affordably stored in large amounts, there is no stopping the renewable energy revolution.
To give you an idea of how quickly this new industry is growing, revenue is expected to jump from $605 million a year now to over $21 billion by 2024 worldwide, according to Navigant Research.
Source: NASDAQ.com
IMF Working Paper-When Should Public Debt Be Reduced?
June 2, 2015--Summary: What considerations should guide public debt policy going forward? Should debt be reduced to achieve normative anchors (such as 60 percent of GDP), should it be increased further to finance a big public investment push, or should the existing debt be serviced forever?
We argue that, for countries with ample fiscal space (little risk of encountering a fiscal crisis), raising distortive taxes merely to bring the debt down is a treatment cure that is worse than the disease.
High public debt of course is costly, but it is a sunk cost only made worse by efforts to pay down the debt through distortionary taxation. Living with the debt is the welfare-maximizing policy. In decisions vis-á-vis the big push for public investment, golden-rule considerations remain salient, with due account taken of the additional servicing costs (and associated distortive taxation) from the resulting buildup of public debt.
view the IMF working paper-When Should Public Debt Be Reduced?
Source: IMF
BlackRock to Vanguard Tell FSB: We're Not Lehman 2.0
June 2, 2015--The world's biggest investment managers, from BlackRock Inc. to Vanguard Group Inc., have a simple message for Mark Carney, head of the Financial Stability Board: stop trying to regulate us like banks.
The firms are seeking to avoid the fate of lenders and insurers that were deemed systemically important in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
Source: Bloomberg
Oil and gas CEOs call for carbon price as Exxon, Chevron outline climate strategy
June 2, 2015--The CEOs of six of the largest energy companies worldwide want national governments to put a price tag on greenhouse gas emissions.
In a letter addressed to Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the authors call upon the United Nations and countries to "open a direct dialogue" on climate change and carbon pricing, "including at the UNFCCC negotiations in Paris and beyond."
Source: E&E Publishing
Larry Fink: Like Europe, Don't Fall In Love With It
June 2, 2015--Europe is currently a good bet for equity investors, but there's reason for caution over the long term, said the head of the world's largest asset manager.
Speaking at a New York investor day Tuesday, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said European equities look attractive over the next year, but that concerns about the region's long-term health remain.
Source: Wall Street Journal
IMF-An Overview of Islamic Finance
June 2, 2015--Summary: Islamic finance has started to grow in international finance across the globe, with some concentration in few countries. Nearly 20 percent annual growth of Islamic finance in recent years seems to point to its resilience and broad appeal, partly owing to principles that govern Islamic financial activities, including equity, participation, and ownership.
In theory, Islamic finance is resilient to shocks because of its emphasis on risk sharing, limits on excessive risk taking, and strong link to real activities. Empirical evidence on the stability of Islamic banks, however, is so far mixed. While these banks face similar risks as conventional banks do, they are also exposed to idiosyncratic risks, necessitating a tailoring of current risk management practices. The macroeconomic policy implications of the rapid expansion of Islamic finance are far reaching and need careful considerations.
Source: IMF
OECD updates its Better Life Index
June 2, 2015--The OECD today launched the 2015 update of the Better Life Index (www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org), an online, interactive tool that invites people to create their own index according to their priorities in 11 topics
-housing, income, jobs, community, education, environment, governance, health, life satisfaction, safety, work-life balance.
Source: OECD
