Signature Bank

Den amerikanska väljarkåren utgörs numera till 40 procent av generation Z och millenials. Inför nästa års presidentval har Washington Post intervjuat nio unga väljare runt om i USA om deras politiska knäckfrågor. Aborter, klimatkrisen, vapenvåldet, stöd till småföretagare och den osäkra bostadsmarknaden är några av hjärtefrågorna som återkommer. – Jag tror att det finns många frustrerade unga människor som är i min situation, unga yrkesarbetande som gått ut college och vill ha ett eget hem, säger 30-åriga Sam Cole som bor norr om Boston där den ekonomiska krisen är påtaglig. (Svensk översättning av Omni). From affordable housing and abortion to support for small businesses, here's what nine Millennial and Gen Z voters want 2024 candidates to focus on. By Anthony J. Rivera 30 September, 2023 Next year's national elections could be consequential for millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, and members of Generation Z, people born between 1997 and 2012. The generations combined are on track to make up roughly 40 percent of U.S. voters, and their vote could decisively impact election outcomes. Over the last decade, issues like abortion, gun violence and the climate crisis have emerged as key priorities of younger voters, according to a survey by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University after the 2022 midterms. Those topics also matched some of the concerns expressed in interviews, most from a Washington Post social callout this summer asking younger voters what issues they wanted candidates for political office - from state and local offices to the presidency - to address in 2024. Other issues included health care costs, campaign finance reform, supporting small businesses, stagnant wages for essential workers and more. Their responses offer a sampling of views: most leaned left or didn't identify with a party. Some individuals are politically active, working in groups centered on youth organizing or running for office. Others are trying to make a living fighting wildfires or operating their own market research company. All said their responses were based on their personal experiences. Sam Cole, a software engineer in Massachusetts, is worried about economic stability and the fentanyl crisis unraveling his hometown. "The issues that I brought up is just the stuff that's most salient in my life," he told The Post. "It's the stuff that I sort of, you know, feel with my heart and see with my eyes." While younger voters have typically turned out to vote at lower rates than older generations, that gap is beginning to narrow. Between 2014 and 2018, turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds increased by 16 percentage points and among 30- to 44-year-olds increased 13 percentage points. In 2020, high voter turnout among younger voters continued: 53 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds turned out compared to just 44 percent in 2016 while 63 percent of 30- to 39-year-olds turned out compared to just 56 percent. Turnout dropped among younger voters in 2022 compared to 2018, at 26 percent turnout for 18-29 and 38 percent for 30-39 - still historically high for a midterm election, which typically produces a lower turnout rate than general elections. These numbers are from The Post's analysis of data released by the census after every election. The impact of their increased participation and the issues they prioritized was most recently demonstrated in the 2022 midterms. Younger voters were galvanized by the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and in key battleground states were credited with helping stem a "red wave" pundits had predicted, with Democrats retaining control of the Senate and Republicans narrowly winning the House. Several of the people we spoke to described multiple issues as inherently connected. The effects of climate change, some said, affect health care, job growth and transportation. Reproductive rights were one domino among many relating to gender equality, one student said. And a former wildland firefighter placed his concerns at the center of a web of issues like wage stagnation, inflation and a rapidly heating planet. ​​ "The age of the single issue voter is quickly going away," Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), a Gen Z member of Congress, told The Post when asked about engagement among younger voters. "A huge part of that is because young people tend to view issues not in the traditional silos that most folks in politics may be used to. They like to connect the issues and they see how these issues inherently work with each other to create the conditions that we're in." How candidates talk about these issues and their policy positions with younger voters will be paramount as younger voters make up more of the electorate and shift to the left. According to a poll released by the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School earlier this year, 18- to 29-year-olds have shifted significantly over the past 10 years for government intervention in curbing climate change, issues of poverty, health care, gun laws and same-sex marriage. "You can collapse each of those [issues] into even a bigger or broader issue, which is the concern about basic freedoms and rights being questioned or under attack, or outright taken away," said John Della Volpe, polling director at Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. "I think that in large measure is really what young people are going to be grappling with in '24," Della Volpe said. Akshara Santoshkumar will never forget as a kid being evacuated out of Cairo in 2011 by her parents' employer, the World Bank's International Finance Corporation, when the country was in the throes of the Arab Spring. She listed off more memories, like how the family eventually relocated to Dubai. And she remembers years later, when she was in grade school there, seeing the 2016 U.S. presidential election on every TV screen and teachers of every nationality keeping tally of votes. "I think we were all cognizant that this would define the rest of our lives," she said, and one consequence of that was the question of reproductive rights. Born in the United States, Santoshkumar returned to Northern Virginia in 2019 and four years later the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. "As a woman and as a woman of color, my rights are directly impacted and I firmly believe that abortion should be protected at a larger level," she said. As a self-proclaimed progressive liberal, any candidate she backs in 2024 must commit to protecting abortion rights nationally because the fight isn't just about women's bodily autonomy. "Young people understand that abortion is kind of like the first domino to fall under the issue of just equality," she said. "I think young people have kind of woken up and they've realized that their rights are, like, under attack." Santoshkumar, who currently attends Barnard College, Columbia University, spoke with reverence of the democratic process that she used to only see from afar, but is now able to participate in. With those basic rights on her mind, she registered to vote and cast a ballot in the state's June primary. "Being able to vote for the first time was really special," she said. Sam Cole lives in a community that sits an hour northwest of Boston, where the heartbreaking effects of economic instability are evident. "There's a lot of towns like this in New England," he said. "It's one of these old mill towns that 100 years ago, you know, was prospering. But it's kind of like a shell of itself now." As an independent, he wants to hear 2024 candidates focus on their challenges. "I think there's a lot of frustrated young people that are my in my situation, that are sort of post-college, young working professionals that want to have their own home," he said. High mortgage rates have left many feeling like "the finish line keeps sprinting ahead," and is destroying peoples' faith in the system. Cole said he was laid off once but considered he and his family, who own their home, lucky for getting back on their feet so quickly. Still, he's deeply concerned about inflation and its effect on the kind of capital needed to sustain the tech sector he has worked in for much of his professional life. Since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, he said, "the jobs in tech are taking a beating." Cole has also seen the scourge of addiction, particularly fentanyl, that has filled the void left by the economic ruin in some communities. Church has always been a big part of his life, he said, so he has volunteered to help how he can. In doing that, he has seen how drugs have ravaged people and it haunts him. "I work with youth," he said, "and just knowing that some of them are going to - one day someone's just going to give them a needle or a pill, it's just brutal." "Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world," Davin Faris said, reciting a line from Mary Oliver's poem "To Begin With, The Sweet Grass," a favorite. He said it paints a great picture of his connection to nature and the environment. He enjoys writing, martial arts and playing his great-grandfather's handed-down Epiphone guitar. But his life's work is about stopping climate change and he has volunteered with Sunrise Movement, a group that focuses on the issue. There's no question climate change is the most important topic for the coming election for Faris, who said he's a progressive, has worked as a congressional intern and was accepted to St. John's College in Annapolis, Md. Any candidate who wants his vote must address it each day they campaign. "It affects virtually every other topic that you can name," he said, "whether it's health care or just job growth or transportation or anything else that people say that they care about." Faris, who lives with his family on a farm that focuses on sustainability and regeneration, pointed to instances of severe flooding in his region the last several years and the smoke from the Canadian wildfires that recently affected the area's air quality. CIRCLE's 2022 poll showed climate change as one of the prime concerns among young people, which tracks with Faris's own assessment. "I think climate change is the issue that my generation will have to suffer with more than anything else," he said. Too few leaders are listening to young peoples' call to curb the use of fossil fuels that are packing carbon into the atmosphere, he said. "I think it's kind of very necessary that our politicians treat the crisis that we're in as a crisis," he said, "and it's something that needs to be not its own discrete conversation, but included in everything else they're talking about." Cherie Animashaun noticed something about several of the students at her elementary school who ended up in juvenile detention: they came from unstable homes, had no mentors and lacked encouragement from adults. It inspired her to do something about education. "What I've been trying to do right now is bring students to the forefront," said the Cornell University freshman. Putting students first and focusing on the needs of young people is also a core part of who Animashaun will vote for next year. "I'm definitely looking for the candidate who will make a firm decision on preserving education for all people," she said. She's noticed politicians who speak on things she cares about and reaches young people where they are, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Frost. Tennessee state representative Justin Pearson (D), who risked his seat for young victims of gun violence and showed "the true heart of a politician," has gained her admiration. Animashaun, who said her Christian faith is the center of her life, has been engaged in social causes from a young age. She started a nonprofit in 2021 called Her Rising Initiative that she said educates around 200 girls a year in aspects of leadership, the legal system and women's rights. She also wrote her first book with the help of mentors when she was 12, a curriculum text titled "Growing With God," and then wrote the "Compass" book series, which features mini lessons about setting goals and harnessing the energy to reach them. She got involved in politics, she said, to help push for the changes in this country - and education is the key. She hopes improving and diversifying the curriculum can prepare children to make more informed decisions about today's biggest problems as they become adults. "If we're not properly educated," she said, "then we won't be able to tackle those branches and those barriers." Joe Ybarra can't understand why some essential workers - particularly ones with the U.S. Forest Service - aren't being compensated properly while risking so much. "When a wildfire is heading towards a town out west, I mean, you want there to be professionals over there being able to stop it," he said. "A lot of the wildland firefighters, especially seasonal, are pretty much homeless. They're living in their trucks, their cars, their RVs throughout the season if their duty station doesn't have sleeping quarters." Ybarra, who is a firefighter in an engine house in southwest Indianapolis and has a background in teaching, tried that seasonal work - which he said can go from May until October and sometimes longer - in Nevada and Idaho. He considered making the move permanent, but couldn't square his financial needs with the wages being offered. And it wasn't just the pay of seasonal workers that turned him off. "A lot of them don't have health insurance as they're going out to fight these fires as well," he said, adding that the Federal Employees Health Benefit, or FEHB, was problematic. The result, Ybarra said, has been a shrinking workforce because of burnout and shortages affecting leadership, who end up lacking the experience they once had. There have been some positive developments in addressing the problem. But without more reforms, "hiring and retaining the permanent wildland firefighting workforce we need will continue to be challenging," the U.S. Fire Service told The Post in an email. "This is pretty important because, you know, these wildfires out West are getting more intense," Ybarra said. And while the issue he wants candidates to talk about centers on fair wages and the dignity of work, much of the problem has its ties in climate change too. "The fire seasons are lasting longer," he said, "I mean, heck, all of us have been indirectly affected by the wildfires up in Canada." Ybarra considers himself a centrist and in 2024 he'll be listening for candidates' solutions for recruiting new wildland firefighters and make sure they get better pay and benefits to ensure the at-risk communities out West get the protection they need. When SarahBeth Boothe thinks about her opposition to abortion, she thinks of her older sister, who needs lifelong special needs care because of an intellectual disability, a condition that wasn't discovered until well after she was born. Some women, however, do discover an abnormality through prenatal screening early on and face a difficult decision about continuing with the pregnancy, one that includes health or financial concerns. Boothe believes that segment of women who are deciding to end the pregnancy should reconsider. She has rejected the argument by some that intellectual disabilities or other special needs don't belong in the discussion about abortion. "We're completely devaluing their life," she said. Because of that, she feels it's the most salient aspect of the topic and one that conservative politicians should lean into. "I would love to hear candidates bring up the special needs community and get them involved," she said is a way to earn her vote. Boothe said nobody in her family has pushed her to choose left or right when casting a ballot, but she considers herself a conservative. She has turned to mainstream news sources like The Post or the New York Times, then sought the perspectives of political commentators Ben Shapiro or Candace Owens. Being "open minded and well-rounded" is important when weighing issues, she said, and has discussed these topics with friends on the left. A world without her sister is too much to contemplate for Boothe. She loves people she said and especially enjoys working with disabled children, who can often be ignored. "When I become a mother and I get married, I want to adopt more children with special needs," she said. "I just absolutely adore them." Ultimately, Boothe believes life begins at conception and that there's danger in "changing the definition of something so vital." She urged candidates to stand up for that perspective next year. "What's true has consistently been true," she said. When George Heller talked about the health care system in the United States, he thought of two family members who had to get MRI's for serious medical conditions and how much stress that brought. While his family was able to absorb the cost, it left him dwelling on the worst-case scenarios others face. "I can't, like, even imagine being in a position where we have to decide between saving our parents lives and paying the bills," he said. "Like, I can't imagine that." "If you're in a job that doesn't provide you insurance and you need lifesaving surgery, then what are you going to do?" he asked. This freshman at George Washington University, who considers himself a Democrat, doesn't mince words on his dissatisfaction with the health care system and the solutions he wants to hear from candidates. "The fact that that exists in the richest country in the world really, really bothers me," he said. "It's hard enough to deal with issues like a parent facing a life-threatening illness. It shouldn't be made harder by affordability." "I know, like there are tons of things you can do and there are tons of things like presidential candidates talk about that they can't do on their own," he said. Heller partly drew insights on the topic from his experience on Rep. Anna G. Eshoo's (D-Calif.) student advisory board, where he focused on health care. "Having a divided Congress makes that really hard. But there are certainly things that we can do that we aren't doing right now. So I want them to be talking about things like price caps. I want them to be talking about patent restrictions." "I would love to have a system where everyone in the country has free health care at no restrictions, but that's just not possible with the way our country works right now," Heller said. Brandon Andrews learned a lot about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre and Black Wall Street after he came to Oral Roberts University to study international relations. He noted how, as a testament to human ingenuity and perseverance, Black people in Tulsa tried to resurrect the Greenwood neighborhood in the years after the riot and make Black Wall Street even bigger, before it was eventually disrupted by a highway project. "I feel like I take some of that Black Wall Street, some of that Greenwood legacy with me as an entrepreneur," he said. As an independent, Andrews said he believes in the power of the market and isn't interested in the government picking winners and losers. But he wants candidates to talk more about how they're going to support small businesses and microbusiness, especially since the disruption of the pandemic as well as the changes that have occurred over the past several decades. "I've seen over and over again just a mismatch between businesses or entrepreneurs like myself and the kinds of businesses we're starting and the kinds of resources that are available from the federal government," said Andrews, who's a senior consultant for a company linked to ABC's "Shark Tank." Opportunity has appeared in many places for Andrews, who not only owns a pair of businesses, but has also gotten involved in nonprofit work and the DC Commission on Fashion, Arts, and Events, as detailed on his professional website. On the older end of the people interviewed, he hailed his generation and those younger for stepping up with entrepreneurial spirit. But he often thinks about what effort is put into ensuring their businesses have a path of success open to them. "How do we put them on a track to ensure that they grow and hire so we have all these positive economic effects that the people like to talk about when they talk about small business?" he said. Sam Cao fondly remembers his mother dragging him to the final debate between Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. James B. Renacci (R-Ohio) in 2018 at Miami University of Ohio when he was younger. "I really loved the energy of the crowd," he said, and as an eighth grader discovered more appreciation for the issues being discussed than he ever had before. "I used to think of politics as a hobby," he said. "So I would say, sorry, I don't do politics, but I realized that's more of a very privileged thing to say." After covid caused a teacher shortage at William Mason High School where he attended and forced it to close, he looked to his statehouse representative for help. Paul Zeltwinger (R), "one of the most absentee members of the state house," was part of a supermajority corrupted by gerrymandering and special interests, Cao said. So he decided to run for the seat as a Democrat. His candidacy caught the attention of local news and caused a stir. And while he lost the primary with 30 percent of the vote, he said the experience taught him a lot about running for office, made him an expert in Ohio politics and opened his eyes to the need for campaign finance reform. "When I talk about campaign finance reform to them," Cao said of his peers, "I also talk about just how getting that resolved or reformed is going to help with just winning on the education issue or the reproductive rights issue." For him, a solution to that problem is the keystone to so many of the problems his fellow Democrats want to fix. "So climate, education, reproductive rights, criminal justice, all those things, they - none of that really can be reformed or change without the proper campaign guidelines," he said. His mother, Hongmei Li, has been an associate professor of strategic communications at Miami University since 2015 according to LinkedIn and before that at Georgia State University in Atlanta, a hub of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and '60s. "She definitely played a large role in just like my activism," he said, describing how racist views associated with the coronavirus triggered her involvement in the anti-Asian hate crimes awareness movement in Cincinnati, where she spoke at National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. © 2023 The Washington Post. Sign up for the Today's Worldview newsletter here.

Att bankerna klarade det årliga testet är ett tecken på att USA:s bankväsende är motståndskraftigt trots den senaste krisen som ledde till att Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank och First Republic Bank kollapsade. Även om de 23 bankerna klarade testet manar Fed till fortsatt vaksamhet. "Vi bör förbli ödmjuka inför hur risker kan uppstå och fortsätta vårt arbete för att säkerställa att banker är motståndskraftiga mot en rad ekonomiska scenarier, marknadschocker och andra påfrestningar" säger Michael Barr från Fed i ett uttalande.

Inget land i världen har än så länge lyckats ta sig igenom krypteringen hos kryptovalutan Monero, skriver The Fast Company. Det gör transaktionerna väldigt säkra – och helt anonyma. Det har också gjort valutan till en favorit hos både islamistiska extremister och nazister. Men nu kan de mest anonyma kryptovalutornas tid hålla på att rinna ut. Monero’s encryption technology, which uses signatures from multiple users to disguise who has made the transaction, has to date not been broken by any country. By Fast Company Staff 21 june, 2023 Analysts with the Counter Extremism Project were used to seeing radical groups asking for donations in crypto currencies. Everyone from neo-Nazis to ISIS sympathizers liked Bitcoin, as it helps avoid oversight from banks and regulators. But in 2020 those with the unenviable job of monitoring hate groups online saw a pro-ISIS group switch its donation preference from Bitcoin to a much smaller and lesser know currency called Monero. Other organizations soon followed; suddenly Islamic extremists and white supremacist groups alike were asking for donations in Monero. – About a year and a half ago this Monero thing took off, and now it’s pretty widespread, Hans-Jakob Schindler, the senior director of the Counter Extremism Project, said. When the analysts looked into why, the reason was obvious. Monero is a privacy coin; a form of crypto currency where users on both ends of the transaction remain anonymous. This was a red flag to Schindler and his analysts. They’re not alone in their concerns. The crypto exchange Binance announced it would delist Monero and other privacy coins later this month in at least four European countries because of increased regulations. Earlier this year Dubai banned privacy coins, following the lead of Japan, South Korea and Australia. They remain legal in the United States. Crypto currencies like Bitcoin, which has the largest market share in virtual money, show a users’ transactions on the blockchain. But privacy coins like Monero, Zcash and Dash shield a users identity using a variety of methods. Monero, that’s Esperanto for money, is perhaps the most private because it’s default setting is anonymity, while other currencies simply feature anonymity as an option. The company, which is organized as an open source non-profit, did not respond to emails seeking comment. However, proponents of privacy maintain that there are many legitimate reasons for users to prefer anonymity, such as keeping companies from tracking online shopping or to prevent competitors and vendors from seeing how much is being paid for items or services. While these concerns hardly seem the inspiration to revolutionize the monetary system, at its core privacy coin developers wanted a system free from political interference: a known currency destabilizer. That monetary independence also makes privacy coins especially handy for illegal transactions. Privacy coins in general, and Monero specifically, are also very secure. The company employs ring signature encryption, which uses signatures from multiple users to disguise who has made the transaction. To date Moneros encryption technology has not been broken by any country, according to Schindler, leaving regulators blind to who used the funds and for what. When, for example, a Neo-Nazi rapper in Austria known as Mr. Bond was charged with glorifying Nazi ideology (a crime in Austria), and sentenced to 10 years in prison last year, police were unable to access his Monero account as part of the investigation to see if there were illegal transactions related to the case. It’s not clear how long privacy coins will remain private in the U.S. The Secret Service has recommended Congress regulate them. The Internal Revenue Service offered a $625,000 bounty to anyone who could hack Monero’s privacy protocols. Schindler’s organization does not advocate banning privacy coins outright, but does want the exchanges to hold a customer’s identifying information so that it could be provided to regulators when required by law. “You do need inherent security controls,” Schindler said. “And that will only be possible to build into the system if there is motivation, and the only way to create motivation is for there to be liability and regulation.” But defenders of privacy balk at government intervention. After all, how is it any different from cash, which provides the most anonymous user experience out there? But cash has built in limitations; it is bulky and hard to transport, especially across national borders (because of regulations). Scott J. Shapiro, a professor of law and philosophy at Yale University, is not convinced more regulation is necessary. Shapiro, the author of the newly released book Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks, is not a defender of privacy coins, necessarily. He has previously written that opening a cryptocurrency account should require a government issued ID, and said he doesn’t see much value in cryptocurrencies in general “except for criminality.” But when it comes to privacy coins he just thinks their use is too niche and the market for them too thin for them to become widespread. “Do we even have to regulate this thing that probably will not be that useful?” he wondered. “I don’t think we need to outlaw privacy coins, because not many people are going to be using it.” Except those who do. Today, if you want to donate to the Atomwaffen Division or buy a racist video game where players kill Black Lives Matter protestors, the preferred currency remains Monero. © 2023 Mansueto Ventures, LLC, as first published in Fast Company. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

USA:s storbanker kan i snitt få 20 procent högre kapitalkrav, rapporterar Wall Street Journal och hänvisar till källor med insyn. Det exakta beloppen beror på bankernas storlek. Förändringarna kommer, enligt källorna, att presenteras under månaden. Årets bankturbulens i USA sänkte nischbankerna Signature Bank och Silicon Valley Bank. Den senare var den största kollapsen av en USA-bank sedan finanskrisen 2008. Inflation, högre räntor och stora börsrörelser. Hur stor avkastning vågar vi räkna med ett år som detta? Vilka fällor ska man undvika på börsen? Och inom vilka sektorer finns vinnare? Med Omnis systerapp Omni Ekonomi får du Sveriges mest heltäckande bevakning av börs- och bolagsnyheter. Lägg därtill att Sveriges främsta aktieexperter svarar på de svåra frågorna och hjälper dig att navigera marknaderna. Nu får alla Omniläsare chansen till en klok investering – testa Omni Ekonomi i två månader för endast 49 kronor (spara 269 kronor).

När tre tidigare chefer för de två kollapsade Silicon Valley Bank och Signature Bank fick svara inför USA:s senat under tisdagen var de snabba att slå ifrån sig ansvaret. ”Alla gjorde bort sig utom vi”, var kontentan, enligt CNN:s analytiker Allison Morrow. SVB:s tidigare vd Gregory Becker sa att han var ”mycket ledsen” att banken kollapsat och skyllde på ”en rad oförutsägbara händelser” så som Feds snabba räntehöjningar, dålig PR och att panik spred sig via sociala medier. Senatorerna var inte nöjda med bankchefernas svar och skrädde inte med orden. De liknade bortförklaringarna med ”min hund har ätit upp min läxa”, kallade dem ”skrattretande” och ifrågasatte deras kompetens som bankchefer. Inflation, högre räntor och stora börsrörelser. Hur stor avkastning vågar vi räkna med ett år som detta? Vilka fällor ska man undvika på börsen? Och inom vilka sektorer finns vinnare? Med Omnis systerapp Omni Ekonomi får du Sveriges mest heltäckande bevakning av börs- och bolagsnyheter. Lägg därtill att Sveriges främsta aktieexperter svarar på de svåra frågorna och hjälper dig att navigera marknaderna. Nu får alla Omniläsare chansen till en klok investering – testa Omni Ekonomi i två månader för endast 49 kronor (spara 269 kronor).

Finansinspektionen ska utreda Alectas riskhantering efter de uppmärksammade miljardförlusterna i USA. ”Syftet med undersökningen är att granska om Alecta har efterlevt externa och interna regler med utgångspunkt i investeringarna i Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank och Signature Bank”, skriver myndigheten i ett pressmeddelande. Totalt förlorade Alecta cirka 20 miljarder kronor när de tre bankerna gick omkull efter att kunderna snabbt tömt sina konton i så kallade bankrusningar. ”Alecta kommer naturligtvis att samarbeta fullt ut med myndigheten”, skriver Alectas presschef Jacob Lapidus i en kommentar till DI. Inflation, högre räntor och stora börsrörelser. Hur stor avkastning vågar vi räkna med ett år som detta? Vilka fällor ska man undvika på börsen? Och inom vilka sektorer finns vinnare? Med Omnis systerapp Omni Ekonomi får du Sveriges mest heltäckande bevakning av börs- och bolagsnyheter. Lägg därtill att Sveriges främsta aktieexperter svarar på de svåra frågorna och hjälper dig att navigera marknaderna. Nu får alla Omniläsare chansen till en klok investering – testa Omni Ekonomi i två månader för endast 49 kronor (spara 269 kronor).

Finanskris, pandemi, geopolitiska spänningar och skenande kostnader – ingenting tycks rå på lyxmarknadens marginaler: Fler blir rikare samtidigt som de rika är beredda att betala allt mer. Lyxkonglomeratet LVMH leder vägen, skriver Financial Times. Gruppens aktie har sedan 2010 stigit från 81 euro till 900 euro och i veckan blev LVMH det första bolaget i Europa att nå en värdering på 500 miljarder dollar. På ett aktieägarmöte nyligen fick LVMH:s vd Bernard Arnault frågan om han kan tänka sig en uppdelning av aktierna för att göra ägandet mer överkomligt. Det korta svaret är nej. – LVMH-aktier är också en lyxprodukt, sa världens rikaste man. The rise of LVMH to become Europe’s first $500bn company illustrates the sector’s seemingly unstoppable growth. By Adrienne Klasa, Lauren Indvik, Harriet Agnew and Gloria Li Financial Times, 27 April 2023 Sharon Wong had decided she had earned a little indulgence as she browsed at Louis Vuitton in La Samaritaine department store, one of Paris’s marquee luxury shopping destinations. “It’s expensive, but I’ve been thinking about it for a few months,” the thirtysomething marketing manager from London said as she examined models of the Petit Sac Plat, a small rectangular bag which costs about €1,500. “I save a bit, I think about them as investments. The top names will always have value, especially the styles with history.” Around the corner, a clutch of suited Italians and a German family milled in the lobby of the five-star Cheval Blanc hotel, where rooms start at about €2,200 a night and staff said occupancy was running at 70 per cent and above. The hotel, La Samaritaine and Louis Vuitton have one thing in common: they are all part of LVMH. The family-controlled luxury conglomerate was built into a powerhouse by Bernard Arnault through serial acquisitions since the 1990s, giving his family a fortune that is now worth about $212bn. The company became the first in Europe to cross the $500bn market valuation threshold this week, and the only one to be ranked among the top 10 biggest global companies. The ascent of LVMH, which this year allowed Arnault to overtake the likes of Tesla’s Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as the world’s wealthiest person, is a testament to the startling rise and resilience of the luxury sector in the past decade, driven by a large and still expanding US market and voracious appetite from China’s fast-growing upper middle class. Financial crises, a pandemic, geopolitical ructions, spiralling inflation and a squeeze on the cost of living have done little to dent the rise of the luxury sector, which encompasses both personal goods and experiences — including travel and hospitality. After contracting sharply as the world locked down in early 2020, the sector rapidly rebounded to €1.15tn in 2021 as bored shoppers flush with savings and government checks indulged themselves. It then defied expectations again by growing a further 19 to 21 per cent in 2022, according to estimates from consultancy Bain. LVMH leads the way, and is lapping the competition. The group’s shares have gone from trading at €81 at the start of 2010 to over €900 this week. Asked at an April shareholder meeting whether he would consider splitting shares to make owning the company more accessible, Arnault vetoed the idea. “I’m going to disappoint you, but desirability is proportional to value,” he said. “LVMH shares are also a luxury product.” But with fears of a global recession lingering, can the sector’s growth continue undaunted? It all hangs on the US and China, the twin growth engines of luxury and its biggest consumer markets. Most luxury companies took a hit to their business in China at the end of last year due to the last gasp of Covid-19 restrictions. But first-quarter sales figures from LVMH and Hermès, the second-biggest luxury group by market value, indicate that recovery in China from the lingering effects of strict zero-Covid policies is already under way, and is expected to accelerate in the second half of the year as travel picks up. “Chinese consumers used to represent around a third of luxury revenues,” says Caroline Reyl, head of premium brands at Pictet Asset Management, and a shareholder in luxury groups including LVMH, Richemont, Hermès and Moncler. “This went down to about 20 per cent during Covid. There is no reason why it’s not going back to one-third.” Analysts are more cautious about the slowing pace of growth in the US. Morgan Stanley expects luxury spending to fall by low single digits both there and in Europe during 2023. After years of extraordinary growth, analysts and investors believe that some moderation is only to be expected. “Will luxury continue to grow mid-to-high teens forever? No, that’s not the logic,” says Erwan Rambourg, global head of consumer and retail research at HSBC. “You will see some moderation at some stage.” But even that moderation is likely to be modest; he expects the industry to grow in the mid-teens this year and 10 per cent in 2024. That’s partly due to its global appeal; Morgan Stanley predicts spending in the Middle East to rise 15 per cent in 2023, while South Korea and Japan register single-digit growth. “The luxury sector is one of the few that is truly global, the successful brands are successful everywhere,” says Roberto Costa, head of global luxury banking at Citi. “Companies like Prada: [consumers] know it in the US, in China, in Argentina. So if there is a lack of demand in one place, there will be demand elsewhere.” However, not all luxury brands are created equal. While the top end of the sector — which is led by the brands Louis Vuitton, Dior, Kering-owned Gucci and the independent houses Chanel and Hermès — are expected to keep barrelling ahead globally, weaker and more mid-market brands exposed to the broader middle class such as Coach and Ralph Lauren are starting to feel some pressure. “It’s not about regions, but the strength of brands and companies,” says Enrico Massaro, head of consumer and retail Emea at Barclays investment bank. “Growth is disproportionately allocated to strong brands, there’s been polarisation for some time and that will continue.” At about €1,500 each, the Petit Sac Plat bags are considered part of Louis Vuitton’s affordable offering, designed to appeal to aspirational buyers such as Sharon Wong. And it is consumers like her, not the ultra wealthy, who have spurred the industry’s growth and turned Louis Vuitton into the world’s first luxury brand with €20bn in annual revenues. “We don’t sell [most Louis Vuitton] products to rich people, it is to people who have money and want to indulge themselves,” says Jean-Jacques Guiony, chief financial officer at LVMH. “The advantage is this cohort is much, much bigger than the super wealthy. We think the upper middle classes will continue to prosper, and we will tailor products and marketing to them.” Definitions of middle class vary, but its growth has been most pronounced in China. Conservative estimates put the middle class demographic at about 350mn people — or 25 per cent of the population, more than the entire population of the US — in 2018, up from about 1 per cent of the population at the turn of the millennium. The wealthy, while much smaller in number, have also grown substantially and developed a taste for luxury goods, allowing brands including Chanel, Dior and Hermès — whose signature bags sell for upward of €20,000 and can usually only be purchased after time on a lengthy wait list — to grow by leaps and bounds. “We couldn’t have believed 10 or 20 years ago these brands would be able to grow [so much] given their exclusive character . . . but we are in a growing market,” Guiony says. That appetite appears to be revving back into gear as China’s zero-Covid restrictions have lifted in the key growth market for the sector. On Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social app, thousands of users published blog posts complaining about handbag shortages and long lines at Chanel stores in cities across China, Hong Kong and Macau. Those complaints did little to deter Mingyou, a 33-year-old tech worker who lives in the southern city of Shenzhen and asked to be identified by a nickname. At the end of March, she says, she tried to get her hands on a coveted Chanel bag only to find it had sold out. “Then I turned to Hermès. But I missed my favourite Hermès bag just because I arrived at the store 15 minutes later than another customer,” she says. In the end she settled for a watch strap and a tie from the storied Parisian house, for a total bill of Rmb6,100. To cultivate this kind of desire, the luxury industry puts limits on the availability of certain products. But to capture as much of the market as possible, the top brands have also increased their offering of “accessible” items costing up to around €3,000, while simultaneously raising prices on their top shelf offerings to foster a sense of exclusivity. Barclays estimates that LVMH raised its prices overall by about 8 per cent last year, but the degree differs between products and brands. Bottega Veneta, owned by Kering, increased prices on its cassette bags by 12 per cent to about €2,000 between October and January, according to HSBC, while Chanel faced pushback from customers after raising the price tag on some of its bags by as much as 74 per cent since 2019 — a stance the company has defended, saying that costs of materials and ensuring manufacturing quality have increased. “The luxury industry, especially in its core categories of accessories and leather goods, is working on an ‘elevation’ strategy through price increases,” says Joëlle de Montgolfier, executive vice-president for retail and luxury at Bain. Last year, 70 per cent of sales growth in leather products was explained by price increases “with only a small percentage explained by volume”. Testament to Arnault’s theory, those increases have not lessened desire. “So far in the sector there is not a lot of elasticity of demand,” says Costa at Citi. “The ceiling [on price] is: as long as there is quality and experience, people are open to it.” The outlook for luxury is not entirely pristine blue skies. After several years of record profits supported by price rises, some costs are starting to creep back up and are expected to dampen margin growth in the coming year. For example, Hermès gave its workers raises of about 7 per cent last year to keep salaries competitive amid inflation and to reward them for a bumper year of profits. That might contribute to “slight margin pressure this year”, says Thomas Chauvet at Citi. “Though who would have thought at the beginning of Covid that margins would go up rather than down?” There are also signs that momentum in luxury’s largest market, the US, is beginning to slow. At Kering, whose sales were weaker across the board than LVMH or Hermès, US sales fell in the first few months of 2023. The pace of sales growth at LVMH also flattened out in the first few months of the year while still growing at 8 per cent. “By region, the US, as expected, was the slowest growing despite being more resilient than we thought,” Rambourg at HSBC notes. That pullback is more pronounced among what Ralph Lauren’s chief executive, Patrice Louvet, calls its “value-oriented customers”, who tend to shop in the brand’s off-price outlets. Like other accessible luxury brands with a US focus such as Coach, the pace of growth slowed in the first quarter at the purveyor of luxe Americana. “We’ve seen that group more pressured,” he tells the Financial Times. “That consumer is feeling the effects of inflation, and is being more discerning.” That means eschewing more frivolous purchases, he says, for “core” items such as sweaters, cotton and linen Oxford shirts, and sport coats. “People still need to buy clothes.” At Arnault’s LVMH, however, the party seems far from over. In the past two weeks, Louis Vuitton launched glossy new campaigns featuring the actor and singer Zendaya and football star Lionel Messi. American rapper Jay-Z gave a concert at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, a museum in Paris founded and supported by Arnault, attended by the LVMH chief executive, Rihanna and Beyoncé. Rihanna then stopped by the Paris headquarters to discuss her LVMH-owned cult beauty brand, Fenty, while Louis Vuitton will fly the fashion world to Seoul this week for a pre-fall women’s runway show orchestrated by the director of the hit dystopian show Squid Game. Arnault himself will not attend, however; he will be in New York for the reopening of Tiffany’s 10-storey flagship. LVMH bought the famous jeweller in 2021 for $15.8 billion, in its largest ever acquisition. The company does not disclose figures but has claimed the renovation involved “the biggest investment in the history of luxury”, according to a person close to the company — beating the remodelling of Dior’s flagship on Avenue Montaigne in Paris, which reopened in 2022 and includes a museum, two restaurants and a private apartment to host VIP shoppers. The displays of opulence has not gone unnoticed in France, however, where Arnault has long been criticised as an avatar of inequality. During months of demonstrations over President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age, some protesters called for higher taxes on Arnault and the country’s billionaire class. But luxury companies argue they are key to the French economy as big employers, taxpayers and drivers of growth. Roughly a third of the rally on the CAC40 exchange since the start of the fourth quarter last year stems from burgeoning investor interest in Hermès, Kering, LVMH and beauty group L’Oréal. “People have said that it is a disgrace for France, that all these big luxury groups produce useless things so we should get rid of them,” Arnault said. “But how many people do we employ in France? Luxury employs a million people.” He went on to claim: “We pay the most taxes of any company in France.” For as long as there exists a growing global demographic whose affluence is insulated from the volatility of the wider economy, companies like LVMH who have mastered the art of tapping it will benefit. At this juncture the only thing that could cloud the outlook in 2023 is “a big external event that comes to ruin the party”, says Caroline Reyl, head of premium brands at Pictet Asset Management, who expects growth to normalise in 2024 and 2025 to “high single digits”.  “In difficult times, the luxury consumer doesn’t trade down,” she adds. “They just buy fewer products.” ©The Financial Times Limited 2023. All Rights Reserved. FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd. Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.

Den amerikanska myndigheten FDIC, som hanterar den statliga insättningsgarantin, har börjat sälja övertagna obligationer från kollapsen av de regionala bankerna Silicon Valley Bank och Signature Bank. Det rapporterar The Wall Street Journal som noterar att det är tidigare än analytikers tidigare förväntningar om att myndigheten skulle inleda avyttringarna först i maj.

USA:s finansiella system och banksystem fortsätter att vara säkert, starkt och motståndskraftigt. SVB och Signature Banks kollapser är inte något innebär att det bredare regulatoriska landskapet är dåligt.

— Jag förväntar mig fortfarande att USA:s ekonomi kommer att växa och att arbetsmarknaden förblir stark och att inflationen viker nedåt, säger finansminister Janet Yellen i en intervju med nyhetsbyrån AFP. Kollapsen för de två bankerna Silion Valley Bank och Signature Bank i mars skakade om bankväsendet och tvingade amerikanska myndigheter, inklusive finansdepartementet och centralbanken Federal Reserve, att kliva in för att förhindra att krisen spred sig. Även om just den krisen nu har lugnat sig varnar analytiker för att instabiliteten kan fortsätta i takt med att banker skruvar åt lånekranarna och minskar det tillgängliga kapitalet för hushåll och företag. Storbanken JP Morgans vd Jamie Dimon varnade förra veckan för att bankkrisen inte är över och kommer att fortsätta många år. Men Janet Yellen säger att hon är fast besluten att se till att alla insättningar är säkra och att fortsätta övervaka tillståndet i bankväsendet. — Vi är också beredda att använda alla verktyg vi har, för institutioner av alla storlekar, för att se till att systemet är säkert och friskt, säger hon.