Plus: Fine of the day
IN TODAY’S EDITION
1️⃣ Hurricane Beryl makes landfall |
2️⃣ Turkey closes its northwest Syria border |
3️⃣ Fine of the day |
Hi Intriguer. Several things are ‘having a moment’ in the US this summer. The first is the “guy in finance; trust fund; six five; blue eyes.” Enough said.
The second is the standalone sequel to Twister, which critics have dubbed the ‘dark horse’ movie of 2024 (Glen Powell also stars in this somehow).
The third is catastrophe bonds—ironically, financial products designed to hedge against twisters—which were the best-performing asset class of 2023.
In our top story today, we dig into cat bonds as the Caribbean anxiously plots the path of Hurricane Beryl, the earliest-ever recorded category 5 storm.
P.S. Intrigue will take off tomorrow (4 July) but will return to your inboxes on Friday 5 July."
Pressure mounts on Biden to step aside.
Representative Lloyd Doggett became the first congressional Democrat to openly call for US President Joe Biden to withdraw as the Democratic nominee after his shaky debate performance last week. Biden has blamed jet lag and his travel schedule for his poor performance and pledged to remain in the race.
EU plans to impose import duties on ‘substandard Chinese goods.’
Legislators are planning to scrap a loophole that allows duty-free shopping for items under €150, according to the Financial Times. The proposal targets low-cost Chinese online retailers such as Temu, AliExpress, and Shein but would apply to any retailer shipping directly from outside the EU. Last year, 2.3 billion items below the duty-free threshold were imported into the bloc.
China detains Taiwanese fishing vessel.
Taipei says the boat was stopped on Tuesday as it headed towards the Taiwanese island of Kinmen, roughly 3km (1.9 mi) off the mainland China coast. The Chinese Coast Guard accused the vessel and its crew of conducting illegal fishing practices in protected waters.
Russian and Chinese leaders meet in Kazakhstan.
Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are in Kazakhstan for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) annual meeting, a Eurasian security forum dubbed the “anti-NATO.” The meeting comes as reports that Russian and Chinese defence companies are collaborating to develop attack drones based on the Iranian Shahed drone.
Over 100 dead in crowd crush in northern India.
Police are investigating the organisers of a religious event that ended in tragedy after a deadly crowd surge killed at least 121 people. Authorities say more than three times the expected number of people showed up to the morning prayer, an issue compounded by inadequate security measures.
Tory minister predicts huge Labour win in UK election.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride says the opposition Labour Party is likely to win the “largest majority this country has ever seen” in tomorrow’s general election. While the final polls give Labour a ~20-point lead, Labour leader Keir Starmer said Stride’s exaggerated claim was a “voter suppression tactic.”
TOP STORY
Why banks are closely following record-breaking Hurricane Beryl
Credits: National Hurricane Centre.
With winds reaching 165 mph, Hurricane Beryl made landfall in Grenada and St Vincent on Monday and was upgraded to a Category 5 storm yesterday. 5 is the highest rating on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which is used to estimate potential property damage.
Hurricane Beryl has already killed at least three people and caused substantial damage to buildings and communication lines. Grenadian Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell stated: “In half an hour, Carriacou [an island in Grenada] was flattened.”
A severe hurricane warning has been issued for Jamaica and the Cayman Islands today (Wednesday), which is “expected to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge” to the islands. Current forecasts suggest Haiti and southern Mexico are also in Beryl’s path.
The storm is now the earliest ever-recorded Category 5 storm to form in the Atlantic, raising concerns about the destructiveness of this year’s hurricane season. Scientists believe hurricanes will become slower and more intense as the planet and its seas continue to warm.
Wait, why are we telling you about a hurricane?
Because economists at the World Bank and the governments of Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and Mexico have a financial stake in Beryl’s behaviour via a financial product known as ‘catastrophe bonds’ (aka cat bonds).
A cat bond allows governments and insurers to transfer the risk of extreme weather events to investors, ensuring they’ll have the money to meet expected claims.
For investors, cat bonds represent a high-risk, high-reward strategy: a mild storm season will net them a tidy return, but a storm like Beryl could lump them with significant losses.
In April, before the Caribbean storm season, the World Bank issued over $745M of cat bonds for Jamaica and Mexico. Hurricane Beryl is threatening to trigger those countries’ payment clauses.
More broadly, cat bonds are having a moment:
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They were the best-performing asset class of 2023, with an impressive 20% return for asset holders (outperforming hedge funds)
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A record $12.6 billion were issued in the first half of 2024
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The cat bond market is now worth ~$48B, more than twice its 2013 valuation.
2023 was particularly lucrative for bondholders as it was a relatively quiet year for natural disasters. But this year, financial analysts are signalling caution, and Beryl’s early and unwelcome appearance suggests they might be right.
INTRIGUE’S TAKE
The ‘Loss and Damage Fund’ agreed at COP28 last December was hailed as a political breakthrough, although plenty of experts are sceptical that developed countries (historically the biggest polluters) will actually stick to their funding commitments.
Cat bonds for climate-related events like storms, floods, droughts, and heatwaves could help provide a more suitable and enforceable (if more costly) way to help regions disproportionately affected by climate change receive financial compensation.
At the considerable risk of sounding too much like Ayn Rand, might financial innovation and the free market be a more productive method of mitigating the cost of climate change than trying to convince rich governments to give money to poorer ones?
Also worth noting:
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The World Bank has issued a total of $4.8B in cat bonds since it first started dealing in them in 2006.
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There’s troubling (if incomplete) evidence that climate change increases social, political, and geopolitical risk over the medium to long term.
A MESSAGE FROM THE DAILY UPSIDE
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MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE…
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🇦🇫 Afghanistan: The EU’s Special Envoy for Afghanistan stated that excluding women’s groups from United Nations-sponsored talks with the Taliban was “worth it” to facilitate dialogue. For the first time since seizing power in 2021, the Taliban participated in UN talks aimed at developing a unified international approach to engagement with Afghanistan.
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🇳🇱 Netherlands: On Tuesday, the Dutch king swore in a new government more than seven months after the elections. The new government, headed by former intelligence chief Prime Minister Dick Schoof, is dominated by legislators loyal to controversial anti-immigrant populist Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom.
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🇵🇭 Philippines: Delegations from China and the Philippines met in Manila on Tuesday to ease tensions in the South China Sea. On June 17, China's navy surrounded and boarded three Filipino resupply ships near the Second Thomas Shoal, injuring Filipino navy personnel and damaging the boats with knives.
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🇧🇴 Bolivia: Bolivia summoned the Argentinian ambassador on Monday after Argentina’s President Javier Milei claimed the attempted coup last week in La Paz was a hoax. The half-hearted effort to overthrow President Luis Arce was over just three hours after it began.
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🇹🇷 Turkey: Turkey closed its main border crossings into northwest Syria on Tuesday after clashes between armed protesters and Turkish troops left seven protesters dead. Tensions in the border regions between Turkey and Syria escalated after a Syrian man living in central Anatolia was accused of harassing a child.
EXTRA INTRIGUE
Here’s what we’re reading on the latest news from the AI sector:
CHART OF THE DAY
Credits: The Athletic
Football fans are well known for pushing the limits of sports fandom, and European football’s governing body, UEFA, is even more well known for its love of cash. By the end of the group stage of Euro 2024 just a few days ago, UEFA had handed out fines totalling a whopping €1,293,645 ($1,391,859).
While some fines are downstream from a pint-too-many, there’s been a darker side to fan behaviour at Euro 2024. Croatian, Albanian, and Serbian fans have been accused of provocative nationalism, including discriminatory chanting and displaying flags that include portions of each other’s territory.
More amusingly, the Danish Football Association was fined €10,000 after some Danish fans displayed this robustly worded banner conveying a sentiment most football fans can probably get behind.
DAILY POLL
Who should be responsible for paying for the damages caused by natural disasters? |
Yesterday’s poll: Can the People's Bank of China use tools to recharge the economy?
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🏛️ Yes, it's a socialist, state influenced, market (66%)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📉 No, the invisible hand cannot be outsmarted (32%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✍️ Other (write in!) (2%)
Your two cents:
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🏛️ H.C: “There are lots of ways to do capital allocation. The question is: is it done efficiently? Over the last few decades China's technocrats have done O.K. I don't see any reason doubt them now”
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✍️ K: “Yes of course they can – it is a managed economy after all. The question is, will the fix they have in mind hold long term? in relationship to what happens with the economies around them?”
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✍️ S.B.S: “It is not clear that the PBC will have any effect. The absurd foreign policy of that nation deters international trade and alienates all kinds of business”
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✏️ Corrections Corner
Thanks to an eagle-eyed reader who pointed out that China’s sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corporation (CIC), manages around $1.3 trillion in assets, not $1.3 billion.