NYC Is Winning The Swaps Shake-Up War

Thoughts Of The Week

NYC Is Winning The Swaps Shake-Up War‍

While we await a Financial Services deal between the EU and UK, it’s clear NYC is winning the Swaps shake-up war. Banks and other market participants are no longer allowed to use London-based platforms to trade swaps while Brussels has permitted the US to serve EU investors.
Although a draft agreement on Financial Services is pretty much ready, France is holding back and trying to link a resolution on fishing to giving their approval to the deal. Whatever happens, it’s clear the EU wants to reduce dependency on the UK – to the point that they will favour the US.

International Housing Shortage‍

Against the backdrop of an acute housing shortage across major cities, Sweden’s government is trying to shut down Bromma airport and convert it into 30,000 new homes as prices in Stockholm have been soaring. It’s Housing Board believes a development of this size
is needed every year to make up the housing shortfall.
And Sweden aren’t alone with Berlin’s former airport (Tegel) closed down to build more than 5,000 apartments and its Politicians are looking at building social housing at the former Tempelhof airport in the heart of the city. Germany has a federal election looming in September and in Berlin, only some 17.4% own their own house / apartment.

The Week That Was…

In the UK, retail seems to have surged immediately on the back of reopening non-essential shops with April total sales values up 51.1% y/y (March: 13.9%).

Germany’s new insolvency proceedings fell -17% m/m in April (March: +37%) in a sign that hopefully indicates a turnaround.

Elon Musk has suspended the use of crypto currency as payment for cars, saying he is ‘concerned about rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel’.