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SET expected to be uneasy as verdict looms in case against Prayut (nationthailand.com)

SET expected to be uneasy as verdict looms in case against Prayut

EconDec 01. 2020

By The Nation

The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) Index rose by 10.77 points, or 0.76 per cent, to 1,419.08 in the morning session on Tuesday.

An analyst at Krungsri Securities expected the day’s index to fluctuate between 1,400 and 1,420 despite the rise in other Asian indices in the morning session.

“We expect the SET to face high volatility as investors are delaying their trade to follow the Opec+ meeting and the Constitutional Court ruling in a case against Prime Minister General Prayut Chan-o-cha, as well as uncertainty over the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.

He recommended that investors buy:

▪︎ AMATA, WHA, SAT and AH that will benefit from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership pact.

▪︎ PTTEP, PTTGC, TOP, IVL and SPRC that benefit from the rising oil price.

The SET Index closed at 1,408.31 on Monday, down 29.47 points or 2.05 per cent. Total transactions amounted to Bt120 billion with an index high of 1,435.04 and a low of 1,408.02.

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Thai gold price edges up despite fall in US, Hong Kong markets (nationthailand.com)

Thai gold price edges up despite fall in US, Hong Kong markets

EconDec 01. 2020

By The Nation

The price of gold in Thailand rose by Bt50 per baht weight in morning trade on Tuesday after falling by Bt200 per baht weight at close on Monday, the Gold Traders Association reported.

As of 9.28am, the buying price of a gold bar was Bt25,450 per baht weight and selling price Bt25,550 while gold ornaments were priced at Bt24,998.84 and Bt26,050, respectively.

At close on Monday, the buying price of a gold bar was Bt25,400 per baht weight and selling price Bt25,500, while gold ornaments were Bt24,938.20 and Bt26,000, respectively.

Spot gold price moved to US$1,780 (Bt53,842) per ounce in the morning, while Comex (Commodity Exchange) gold price to be delivered in February next year dropped by $7.2 to $1,780.9 per ounce on Monday due to mass sell-offs in safe-haven assets amid positive news of a Covid-19 vaccine.

Hong Kong gold price, meanwhile, dropped by HK$20 to $16,430 (Bt64,112) per tael, the Chinese Gold and Silver Exchange Society reported.

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U.S. stocks fall from record highs (nationthailand.com)

U.S. stocks fall from record highs

EconDec 01. 2020

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Vildana Hajric, Kamaron Leach

U.S. stocks fell from records as investors assessed the prospects for risk assets after a blistering month long rally. The dollar strengthened.

The S&P 500 dropped the most in more than a week, though the benchmark index still registered its best month since April. Global stocks and American small caps posted their best months on record. Broad selling sent the Dow Jones industrial average lower. The tech-heavy Nasdaq indexes that trailed in November fared better, briefly touching another record high on Monday. Gold slumped, and Bitcoin rallied back to an all-time high.

“The market may be getting tired from its very strong November and simultaneous all time highs (DJIA, S&P and Russell 2K), which could push the benchmarks into a traditional mid-December low,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research.

The rapid pace to a coronavirus vaccine has given investors the confidence to price in a return to normalcy and faster economic growth, helping lift shares of companies that were hardest hit by the pandemic.

Over the weekend, Surgeon General Jerome Adams said the federal government hopes to quickly review and approve requests from two drugmakers for emergency approval of their covid-19 vaccines.

“November has been such an unbelievable move up,” said Andrew Mies, chief investment officer of 6 Meridian. “All that is being driven by the vaccine.”

Shares of Moderna surged 20% on Monday after the company said it plans to request clearance for its coronavirus vaccine in the U.S. and Europe.

The MSCI World index soared 13% in November, the best performance on record.

The risk-on mood across markets has hurt demand for haven assets. Gold posted its largest monthly decline in four years. Even after gaining on Monday, the dollar slumped 2.4% in November.

Oil edged lower in New York. OPEC+ began two days of potentially complicated talks to hash out the size of its oil-production cuts next year, with the group’s president calling for caution in a fragile market.

Elsewhere, the MSCI Asia Pacific index sank 1.6% on Monday, the biggest loss in a month.

Bitcoin took less than three years to replicate the euphoric ascent that catapulted the cryptocurrency into the mainstream consciousness. The world’s largest digital asset rose as much as 8.7%, to $19,351, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It traded at a few cents for several years after its late 2008 launch by an unknown software developer in the wake of the global financial crash.

These are some key events coming up:

– – –

– The Reserve Bank of Australia holds a policy meeting Tuesday.

– Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testifies before Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday.

– The U.S. employment report on Friday is expected to show that more Americans headed back to work in November, though at a slower pace than last month.

Here are some of the main moves in markets:

– The S&P 500 index declined 0.5%, to 3,621.82 as of 4:01 p.m. New York time, the lowest in a week on the largest drop in more than a week.

– The Dow Jones Industrial Average decreased 0.9%, to 29,643.97, the lowest in a week on the biggest dip in more than a week.

– The Nasdaq Composite index dipped 0.1%, to 12,198.74, the first retreat in more than a week.

– The MSCI All-Country World index sank 0.9%, to 617.87, the lowest in a week on the biggest dip in a month.

The Stoxx Europe 600 index sank 1%, to 389.36, the lowest in a week on the largest decrease in more than a month.

Currencies

– The Bloomberg Dollar Spot index jumped 0.3%, to 1,144.98, the highest in a week on the biggest increase in three weeks.

– The euro decreased 0.3%, to $1.1927, the largest decrease in almost three weeks.

– The Japanese yen weakened 0.3%, to 104.40 per dollar, the biggest fall in a week.

Bonds

– The yield on 10-year Treasuries rose one basis point, to 0.85%.

– The yield on 30-year Treasuries increased one basis point, to 1.58%.

– Germany’s 10-year yield rose two basis points, to -0.57%.

– Britain’s 10-year yield climbed two basis points, to 0.305%, the biggest surge in almost three weeks.

Commodities

– West Texas Intermediate crude sank 0.7%, to $45.19 a barrel, the largest decrease in more than two weeks.

– Gold depreciated 0.7%, to $1,776.09 an ounce, the weakest in five months.

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AOT revising Suvarnabhumi’s Bt44bn northern expansion plan (nationthailand.com)

AOT revising Suvarnabhumi’s Bt44bn northern expansion plan

EconDec 01. 2020

By The Nation

Airports of Thailand (AOT) is revising its planned Bt44-billion northern expansion of Suvarnabhumi Airport, said AoT president Nitinai Sirismatthakarn.

The revision to bring the plan in line with the “new normal” concept is expected to take between one and two months to complete.

The new northern terminal will have annual capacity for 30 million passengers.

Also to be drawn up are details for projects to extend the existing passenger terminal eastwards and westwards, he added.

Nitinai expressed confidence the global aviation sector would return to normal next year when Covid-19 vaccines are expected to become available.

The number of passengers at Suvarnabhumi is forecast to return to pre-outbreak levels of 65 million in 2023.

Meanwhile, AOT expects to finish construction of Satellite Terminal 1 in 2022, boosting Suvarnabhumi’s annual capacity by 15 million passengers.

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Bonds aimed at heavy corporate emitters set to roll out in 2021 (nationthailand.com)

Bonds aimed at heavy corporate emitters set to roll out in 2021

EconDec 01. 2020

By Bloomberg
Tom Freke

The next thing in green investing is a new kind of debt designed to help fund the trillions of dollars needed to wean the world from carbon.

Transition bonds are being developed for fossil-fuel companies and other heavy corporate emitters, which have largely been shut out of a booming green market. So-called brown industries would have to use proceeds from the sales to fund their clean-energy transformation.

Next year “will be a ramp-up phase for transition instruments,” said Marisa Drew, Credit Suisse Group AG’s chief sustainability officer. “We’ll have some experimental issuers tap the market and then we’ll see many investors lining up.”

The United Nations estimates the cost to decarbonize the world will be $35 trillion, and capital markets will have to play a role. Corporations such as Citigroup Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. and governments from Chile to Sweden raised a record $235 billion this year in green bonds, used to fund environmentally-friendly projects.

Such financing is likely to get another boost next year from the European Union’s plans to start green bonds and from U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s prioritization of climate policies. The coronavirus pandemic is also spurring an explosion in social bonds, where issuance is up eight times on last year to fund projects that benefit society as a whole.

Behind the scenes, bankers and investors are now writing rules for transition finance. The ground is fertile partly because there aren’t enough green bonds to satisfy investor demand, Drew said. That was shown by near-record bidding for a debut green sale from Germany, with the securities trading at a premium to the country’s conventional debt.

“I don’t think anybody thought in January, and certainly not since we became aware of the gravity of Covid, that this would be such a busy year for green bonds,” said Daniel Klier, HSBC Holdings Plc’s global head of sustainable finance. “It helped that governments and central banks put green topics at the heart of their recovery plans and that companies with superior environmental, social and governance profiles performed better in the crisis.”

As demand has risen for green bonds, their yields have fallen below those of conventional bonds. Enel SpA expects its cost of borrowing to decline because of the company’s decision to use sustainable finance for an increasing proportion of its debt. The Italian utility said its sustainability-linked debt cost it 15 to 20 basis points less than non-ESG debt.

The growing interest from borrowers and investors means green finance is heading for the mainstream with issuance set to surge by around 60% next year to reach $640 billion, according to NatWest Markets Plc.

Yet green bond sales alone will still fall short of what’s required to address climate change, said Tom Chinery, credit portfolio manager at Aviva Investors. Institutional funds have frowned upon oil firms and heavy industry issuing green bonds, since creating one environmental project doesn’t mean companies are cutting their overall emissions.

“What we need is for companies to sign up to whole-company, science-based, environmental targets to achieve meaningful impact,” Chinery said.

Companies have an incentive to commit to such targets because heavy polluters are facing the threat of tougher rules, as countries try to meet long-term emissions targets. Meanwhile, many banks and investors are planning to cut financing or divest funds from laggards, likely raising their cost of capital, as they pour money into ESG investments instead.

Transition bonds aim to provide a solution by tying funds to strict targets, aligning borrowers’ interests with wider policies such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change.Several ideas how this might work have been suggested, including a proposal from French insurer Axa SA, and a more recent offering from the Climate Bonds Initiative that focuses on how companies can transition to low-emission solutions. The International Capital Markets Association, whose voluntary guidelines for other types of sustainable debt are widely used, is due to release a handbook for climate transition finance on Dec. 9.Yo Takatsuki, head of ESG research and active ownership at Axa Investment Managers, and one of the ICMA group’s coordinators, said climate transition finance rules need to be ambitious and have the Paris agreement at their heart. “This will be the first global attempt by the capital markets to set a framework for the transition,” he said. “If we don’t map out how to transform brown industries to green, then we won’t be able to achieve Paris.”The ICMA working group on climate transition finance has more than 80 participants, including building materials companies Buzzi Unicem SpA and LafargeHolcim Ltd., as well as oil producers Repsol SA and Total SE.

Only a handful of companies have so far sold transition bonds, given the lack of consensus on what they should be. One of the first was from a Brazilian beef producer, Marfrig Global Foods SA, which said proceeds from the $500 million bond would be used to buy cattle from ranchers in the Amazon region who comply with non-deforestation and other sustainable criteria. Other deals include an offering Monday from Italian gas pipeline operator Snam SpA, only the third euro transition bond sold year-to-date.Total, France’s largest oil company, announced plans last month to sell a “very large” transition bond, while other European majors have stressed the importance of a transition away from oil. LafargeHolcim raised 850 million euros of sustainability-linked bonds earlier this month that will pay a 0.75% higher interest rate if the company misses a carbon-emissions target.

“If done right, transition bonds can offer an important additional asset class for issuers alongside green bonds, and with that help to prevent greenwashing in the green bond market,” Mario Eisenegger, a money manager at M&G Investments, wrote in a blog posting earlier this year calling for industrywide standards for the securities.Greenwashing, where environmental benefits are exaggerated or misrepresented, is a growing concern as the sustainable finance market expands, said James Rich, senior portfolio manager at Aegon Asset Management. But if investors can successfully identify the most promising labeled bonds, that should ultimately push issuers to increase the sustainability of their business, he said.The ability of transition bonds to grow as an asset class, particularly as quickly as backers hope, depends on ambitious action across all parts of the financial system, said Ben Caldecott, director of the Oxford Sustainable Finance Program. That is needed given adapting to climate change is likely to be the most expensive shift in human history.

“All finance needs to become transition finance,” he said.

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Govt hopes to make Thailand one of the top countries for business in two years (nationthailand.com)

Govt hopes to make Thailand one of the top countries for business in two years

EconDec 01. 2020Deputy PM Supattanapong Punmeechaow 

By The Nation

The government has set an ambitious target for itself – making Thailand one of the top 10 countries in the world for ease of doing business in the next two years, said Deputy PM Supattanapong Punmeechaow, who doubles as energy minister.

Thailand was ranked 21 in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business 2020 list of 190 countries surveyed.

He added that Thailand is ready on all aspects, especially logistics infrastructure, in order to achieve this goal.

Phongsaward Guyaroonsuith, director-general of the Strategic Transformation Office, said the office aims to complete 85 per cent of laws related to doing business within the next year to help boost the country’s ranking.

Nattapon Dejvitak, Loxley’s executive vice president, said the private sector is working with the government to develop a trade platform to help cut related costs for business operators in import-export transactions.

The platform, which will be linked up with 37 related state agencies, will go on trial in the first quarter of next year, before going into full use later in the year. This will help save between Bt4 billion and Bt5 billion per year on the cost of import-export documentation and related labour costs.