Monday, January 30, 2023

5 Things to Start Your Day

Abu Dhabi invests in Adani. US considers all-out Huawei ban. Malaysia's prime minister urges Goldman to pay 1MDB settlement. Here's what you

Abu Dhabi invests in Adani. US considers all-out Huawei ban. Malaysia's prime minister urges Goldman to pay 1MDB settlement. Here's what you need to know today.

Investment Boost

Abu Dhabi's International Holding Co. will invest about $400 million in Adani Enterprises follow-on share sale, voicing confidence in Indian billionaire Gautam Adani's business empire. The funding from IHC, which is controlled by a key member of the emirate's royal family, will represent about 16% of the offering. The investment comes following allegations from Hindenburg Research that the Indian conglomerate used a web of companies in tax havens to inflate revenue and stock prices. Adani's 413-page attempt to restore confidence in his business empire fell flat with investors. Read the full document here. A three-day selloff in Adani Group stocks has now erased more than $68 billion of market value.

Cutting Ties

The Biden administration is considering cutting off Huawei from all of its American suppliers, including Intel and Qualcomm, as the US government intensifies a crackdown on the Chinese tech sector. Sales from US firms to Huawei currently require government approval, with the telecoms giant suspected of having ties to China's military. Now, some officials in the Biden administration are advocating banning all sales to Huawei. Last week, the US persuaded Japan and the Netherlands to join it in restricting exports of advanced semiconductor manufacturing machinery to China. Meanwhile, in another area of conflict, Beijing has urged US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy not to pay a visit to Taiwan.

Tinderbox-Timebomb

Hedge fund Universa Investments has told clients that ballooning debts across the global economy are poised to wreak havoc on markets rivaling the Great Depression. "It is objectively the greatest tinderbox-timebomb in financial history," the firm's Chief Investment Officer, Mark Spitznagel, wrote in a letter to investors. Universa is a so-called tail-risk fund, designed to protect investors during the toughest of market circumstances. These types of funds have an incentive to anticipate dire economic conditions, as they thrive during market downturns. Get the full story on Spitznagel's doomsday scenario here.

Decision Time

Shares in Asia looked set to extend monthly advances on Tuesday in an eventful week that includes a Federal Reserve rate decision. Futures contracts pointed to increases in Japan and Hong Kong. US stocks pared their monthly gains in Monday's session, with the Nasdaq 100 suffering its worst day since Dec. 22 and the S&P 500 falling the most since Jan. 18 after declines in Apple and Microsoft weighed on both indexes. The Fed is expected to raise rates by a quarter percentage point on Wednesday, slowing its pace for a second straight session. But traders will be watching for the tone officials set for future meetings.

Pay Up

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim urged Goldman Sachs honor its settlement with the government for its role in the 1MDB scandal, saying the Wall Street firm shouldn't use its financial strength to dictate terms. State development fund 1MDB became the center of a multi-billion dollar scandal that spawned probes in Asia, the US and Europe, with Goldman in 2020 admitting its role in the biggest foreign bribery case in U.S. enforcement history. Malaysia says the bank hasn't stuck to settlement terms announced in 2020.

  • Will the tech sector rally or slump this year? Are the industry's layoffs too big, too small or premature? How significant is ChatGPT? Share your views in our latest MLIV Pulse survey.

What we've been reading

And finally, here's what Garfield's interested in this morning

Investors look to be showing some nerves ahead of the Federal Reserve's policy decision on Wednesday. A glance at financial conditions shows there are plenty of reasons for some anxiety, with markets in danger of getting way too far ahead of themselves in pricing for an easier stance from the central bank.

Financial conditions in the US are actually rather loose — as easy as they have been since February, back before the Fed set out on the steepest year of interest-rate hikes in a generation. With a wave of pension-fund buying threatening to also undermine any impact from the US central bank's efforts to trim its balance sheet, investors are well and truly in "fight the Fed" mode. Add in still-elevated inflation and a 3.5% jobless rate that harks back to the 1960s and policymakers have plenty of reasons to deliver a hawkish shock or two, either through action or rhetoric — or both.

Garfield Reynolds is Chief Rates Correspondent for Bloomberg News in Asia, based in Sydney.

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