The Big Interview

Governments across the world are scrambling to conjure up funds to offset the financial devastation of the coronavirus pandemic, including in the UK, which is expected to raise about £250bn between April and August alone. GlobalCapital spoke to Roger Bootle, economist and chairman of Capital Economics and recent author of “The AI Economy”, about the long-term implications of the UK’s higher borrowing.

Unédic, the French unemployment insurance agency, is facing an unprecedented strain on its services thanks to the coronavirus pandemic and its funding need has more than tripled as a result. CFO Jun Dumolard told GlobalCapital how the institution has been managing.

Unlike many other banks, ANZ has had no need to draw on central bank emergency liquidity lines during the coronavirus pandemic. Its risk-weighted assets have grown but this has been offset by greater retail deposits. And, as head of funding Mostyn Kau revealed, what subordinated debt issuance it does have to do will be for regulatory reasons rather than to do with Covid-19 crisis funding.

As UK mid-cap companies face the worst disruption that most of them will have experienced, many are turning to their corporate brokers for advice on how to survive the coronavirus crisis. Carlton Nelson, co-head of Investec's corporate broking business, has worked on a number of Covid-19 capital raising deals for UK companies and shared his experiences of an unprecedented crisis — its effects on the business that needs to be done and how it is executed.

Luca Bertalot, secretary-general of the European Mortgage Federation-European Covered Bond Council (EMF-ECBC), speaks to GlobalCapital about the covered bond market living up to its reputation, the ECBC’s Covid-19 task force and monitoring report, transparency enhancements, the scope for a revival of the public sector market, and how green European Secured Notes (ESNs) and covered bonds secured on energy efficient mortgages could be flagships in Europe’s economic recovery.

John Davidson is CEO of the Options Clearing Corporation, the equity derivatives clearing house. GlobalCapital caught up with him to discuss how clearing has held up in the Covid-19 crisis — during which equity markets endured huge volatility — and how he is planning for the return from lockdown.

Martin McKinney, senior manager of medium-term funding at Santander UK, speaks to GlobalCapital about the impact the UK’s lockdown on the bank’s balance sheet, central bank liquidity, and the bank’s changing mix of regulatory and pure funding.

A strong and growing deposit base, an active private placement market and sizeable proportion of prefunding has put the Pfandbrief banks in a strong liquidity position, the chief executive officer of the Association of German Pfandbrief Banks (VDP), Jens Tolckmitt, told GlobalCapital in an interview on Tuesday covering a wide range of other topics such as real estate values, the mortgage lending value and Basel III’s output floor.

Lloyds Bank has got most of its covered bond and senior funding out of the way already this year — ideal, given the threat of the coronavirus pandemic to both bond markets and the wider economy. But the bank has also been busy optimising its capital stack, which should support its lending just when it is most needed.

Lee Buchheit is a veteran of sovereign debt restructuring and is considered by many to be a world expert in the field. He has worked on debt restructuring among many of the emerging markets countries, including Argentina, Greece and Venezuela. GlobalCapital caught up with him this week to discuss the debt crisis gripping the EM universe, and how private sector creditors should approach requests for debt standstills.

In the first in a new series of crisis-time interviews with senior capital markets participants, GlobalCapital's Toby Fildes talks to Frank Czichowski, treasurer of Germany's KfW.

Can the capital markets function properly with its workforce operating remotely, whether from home or at disaster recovery centres? This question is becoming increasingly important as the Covid-19 infection rate rockets and the death toll grows. One organisation that has more experience of coping than most is the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, based in Beijing.