India hikes US tariffs after losing preferential trade Access

Spat casts shadow over security relationship designed to counter Chinese influence

Stephanie Findlay in New Delhi


Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, left, with US president Donald Trump during a visit to Washington in 2017 © AP


India has raised tariffs on US goods in retaliation for Washington’s decision to strip New Delhi of preferential access to the US market.

The increase in tariffs on more than 20 types of goods including almonds, apples and walnuts, took effect on June 16, said India’s commerce ministry.

The trade spat has cast a shadow over the deepening India-US security relationship, designed to counter China’s economic and military influence in the region.

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo is scheduled to hold talks in New Delhi with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar ahead of the G20 summit in Japan this month, where US president Donald Trump and India’s prime minister Narendra Modi are expected to meet.

US-India bilateral trade reached $142bn in 2018, a seven-fold increase since 2001, according to the US state department. But Mr Trump has repeatedly criticised India’s protectionist policies, describing its tariffs on goods such as Harley-Davidson motorcycles as unfair.

New Delhi’s loss of privileges under Washington’s generalised system of preferences (GSP) — a programme to aid the economies of less developed countries — will hit about $6bn worth of Indian goods previously imported into the US duty-free.

India’s commerce ministry has called the US decision “unfortunate” and had said it wanted to find a “mutually acceptable way forward”. New Delhi proposed higher tariffs last year following the US announcement that it would not grant India a waiver when it increased its steel and aluminium tariffs, but decided not to do so until losing its preferential trade status.

India’s recent efforts to regulate ecommerce titans Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart have aggravated tension, with US companies complaining that they were surprised by the new rules.

There is also tension over the Trump administration’s threat to impose sanctions on India if it purchases oil from Iran and if it proceeds with its planned acquisition of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles.

Earlier this week, Mr Pompeo appeared open to discussing India’s preferential trade status. “We’ll probably discuss the recent decision on the GSP programme,” Mr Pompeo said, adding that he hoped “India will drop their trade barriers and trust in the competitiveness of their own companies, their own businesses, their own people and private sector companies.”

C Raja Mohan, director of the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, said it was now a question of finding the middle ground. “If you are a pessimist, this is the beginning of a trade war between India and the US,” he said.

“If you are an optimist, India’s tariff retaliation sets the stage for a serious negotiation between Delhi and Washington on trade issues and a new framework to transform the commercial partnership and reinforce the security ties.

“Pompeo’s talk in Delhi and Modi’s visit to the Osaka G20 should tell us who might prevail: pessimists or optimists.”

Q1 2019 Z.1 "Flow of Funds"

How the long debt cycle might end

Some fear the fire of inflation; others the ice of deflation

Martin Wolf




Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice.” These brilliant lines by the poet Robert Frost capture the world’s possible economic prospects.

Some warn that the world of high debt and low interest rates will end in the fire of inflation. Others prophesy that it will end in the ice of deflation. Others, such as Ray Dalio of Bridgewater, are more optimistic: the economy will be neither burnt nor frozen. Instead, it will be neither too hot nor too cold, like the baby bear’s porridge, at least in countries that have had the fortune and wit to borrow in currencies they create freely.

William White, former chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements, presciently warned of financial risks before the 2007-09 financial crisis. Last year, he warned of another crisis, pointing to the continuing rise in non-financial sector debt, especially of governments in high-income countries and corporations in high-income and emerging economies. Those in emerging countries are particularly vulnerable, because much of their borrowing is in foreign currencies. This causes currency mismatches in their balance sheets. Meanwhile, monetary policy fosters risk-taking, while regulation discourages it — a recipe for instability.



Start then with inflationary fire. Much of what is going on right now recalls the early 1970s: an amoral US president (then Richard Nixon) determined to achieve re-election, pressured the Federal Reserve chairman (then Arthur Burns) to deliver an economic boom. He also launched a trade war, via devaluation and protection. A decade of global disorder ensued. This sounds rather familiar, does it not?

In the late 1960s, few expected the inflation of the 1970s. Similarly, a long period of stable and low inflation has calmed fears of an upsurge, even though unemployment has fallen to low levels. (In the US, it is at its lowest level since 1969.) Some suggest that the Phillips curve — the short-term relationship between unemployment and inflation — is dead, because low unemployment has not raised inflation. More likely, it is sleeping. Inflation expectations may now be anchored. But a strong surge of demand might still sweep them away.



In some ways, a rise in inflation would be helpful. A sudden jump in inflation would reduce debt overhangs, notably of public debt, just as the inflation of the 1970s did. Moreover, central banks know what to do in response to a surge in inflation. Yet higher inflation would also lead to a rise in long-term nominal interest rates, which tend to front-load the real burden of debt service. Short-term rates would also jump as they did in the early 1980s. Risk premia would rise. High-flying stock markets might collapse. Labour relations would become more strife-prone, as would politics. This disarray would hit unevenly, causing currency disorder. The loss of confidence in public institutions, notably central banks, would be severe. In the end, the likely stagflation would end in severe recession, as in the 1980s.

Now turn to deflationary ice. This might begin with a sharp negative economic shock: a worsening trade war, a war in the Middle East or a crisis in private or public finance, possibly in the eurozone, where the central bank is relatively constrained. The result could be a deep recession, even a lurch into deflation, so worsening the debt overhang.




The big difficulty would be knowing how to respond given that interest rates are already so low. Conventional policy (lower short-term rates) and conventional unconventional policy (asset purchases) might be insufficient.

A range of other possibilities exist: negative rates from the central bank; lending to banks at lower rates than the central bank pays on their deposits; purchase of a much wider range of assets, including foreign currencies; monetisation of fiscal deficits; and “helicopter drops” of money. Much of this would be technically or politically problematic, and would require close co-operation with the government. Meanwhile, if governments acted too slowly (or not at all) a depression might ensue, as in the 1930s, via mass bankruptcy and debt deflation. Many fools recommended that in 2008.



Yet none of these disasters is at all inevitable. They would be chosen catastrophes. As Mr Dalio argues, a golden mean is possible. Fiscal and monetary policy would then co-operate to generate non-inflationary growth. Changes in fiscal incentives would discourage debt and encourage equity. Government policy would shift income towards spenders, reducing our current reliance on debt-fuelled asset bubbles for sustaining demand. Still more debt would be moved out of the balance sheets of financial intermediaries directly on to the balance sheets of households.

Even if real interest rates rose, perhaps because productivity growth strengthened durably, the impact of robust non-inflationary growth on the debt burden would almost certainly outweigh a move to somewhat higher interest rates. We would, above all, be moving out of “secular stagnation” into something less bad. That shift might be tricky. But it would be to a better world.





It is not necessary to repeat the mistakes of either the 1930s or the 1970s. But we have made enough mistakes already and are, collectively, making enough more right now to risk either outcome, possibly both.

A breakdown of the global economic and political order seems conceivable. The impact on our debt-encumbered world economy and increasingly fraught global politics is impossible to calculate. But it could be horrendous. Above all, nationalistic strongmen would be unable to co-operate if things went seriously wrong, as they might, perhaps even soon.

That is the most worrying feature of our world.

The Growing Risk of a 2020 Recession and Crisis

Across the advanced economies, monetary and fiscal policymakers lack the tools needed to respond to another major downturn and financial crisis. Worse, while the world no longer needs to worry about a hawkish US Federal Reserve strangling growth, it now has an even bigger problem on its hands.

Nouriel Roubini




NEW YORK – Last summer, my colleague Brunello Rosa and I identified ten potential downside risks that could trigger a US and global recession in 2020. Nine of them are still in play today.

Across the advanced economies, monetary and fiscal policymakers lack the tools needed to respond to another major downturn and financial crisis. Worse, while the world no longer needs to worry about a hawkish US Federal Reserve strangling growth, it now has an even bigger problem on its hands.

Many involve the United States. Trade wars with China and other countries, along with restrictions on migration, foreign direct investment, and technology transfers, could have profound implications for global supply chains, raising the threat of stagflation (slowing growth alongside rising inflation). And the risk of a US growth slowdown has become more acute now that the stimulus from the 2017 tax legislation has run its course.

Meanwhile, US equity markets have remained frothy since our initial commentary. And there are added risks associated with the rise of newer forms of debt, including in many emerging markets, where much borrowing is denominated in foreign currencies. With central banks’ ability to serve as lenders of last resort increasingly constrained, illiquid financial markets are vulnerable to “flash crashes” and other disruptions. One such disruption could come from US President Donald Trump, who may be tempted to create a foreign-policy crisis (“wag the dog”) with a country like Iran. That might bolster his domestic poll numbers, but it could also trigger an oil shock.

Beyond the US, the fragility of growth in debt-ridden China and some other emerging markets remains a concern, as do economic, policy, financial, and political risks in Europe. Worse, across the advanced economies, the policy toolbox for responding to a crisis remains limited.

The monetary and fiscal interventions and private-sector backstops used after the 2008 financial crisis simply cannot be deployed to the same effect today.

The tenth factor that we considered was the US Federal Reserve’s interest-rate policy. After hiking rates in response to the Trump administration’s pro-cyclical fiscal stimulus, the Fed reversed course in January. Looking ahead, the Fed and other major central banks are more likely to cut rates to manage various shocks to the global economy.

While trade wars and potential oil spikes constitute a supply-side risk, they also threaten aggregate demand and thus consumption growth, because tariffs and higher fuel prices reduce disposable income. With so much uncertainty, companies will likely opt to reduce capital spending and investment.

Under these conditions, a severe enough shock could usher in a global recession, even if central banks respond rapidly. After all, in 2007-2009, the Fed and other central banks reacted aggressively to the shocks that triggered the global financial crisis, but they did not avert the “Great Recession.” Today, the Fed is starting with a benchmark policy rate of 2.25-2.5%, compared to 5.25% in September 2007. In Europe and Japan, central banks are already in negative-rate territory, and will face limits on how much further below the zero bound they can go. And with bloated balance sheets from successive rounds of quantitative easing (QE), central banks would face similar constraints if they were to return to large-scale asset purchases.

On the fiscal side, most advanced economies have even higher deficits and more public debt today than before the global financial crisis, leaving little room for stimulus spending. And, as Rosa and I argued last year, “financial-sector bailouts will be intolerable in countries with resurgent populist movements and near-insolvent governments.”

Among the risks that could trigger a recession in 2020, the Sino-American trade and technology war deserves special attention. The conflict could escalate further in several ways. The Trump administration could decide to extend tariffs to the $300 billion worth of Chinese exports not yet affected. Or prohibiting Huawei and other Chinese firms from using US components could trigger a full-scale process of de-globalization, as companies scramble to secure their supply chains. Were that to happen, China would have several options for retaliating against the US, such as by closing its market to US multinationals like Apple.

Under such a scenario, the shock to markets around the world would be sufficient to bring on a global crisis, regardless of what the major central banks do. With the current tensions already denting business, consumer, and investor confidence and slowing global growth, further escalation would tip the world into a recession. And, given the scale of private and public debt, another financial crisis would likely follow from that.

Both Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping know that it is in their countries’ interest to avoid a global crisis, so they have an incentive to find a compromise in the next few months. Yet both sides are still ratcheting up nationalist rhetoric and pursuing tit-for-tat measures. Trump and Xi each seem to think that his country’s long-term economic and national security may depend on his not blinking in the face of a new cold war. And if they each genuinely believe the other will blink first, the risk of a ruinous clash is high indeed.

It is possible that Trump and Xi will meet for talks during the G20 summit on June 28-29 in Osaka. But even if they do agree to restart negotiations, a comprehensive deal to settle their many points of contention would be a long way off. As the two sides drift further apart, the space for compromise is shrinking, and the risk of a global recession and crisis in an already fragile global economy is rising.


Nouriel Roubini, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and CEO of Roubini Macro Associates, was Senior Economist for International Affairs in the White House's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve, and the World Bank.

People v power

The rule of law in Hong Kong

Huge demonstrations have rattled the territory’s government—and the leadership in Beijing

Risky Borrowing Is Making a Comeback, but Banks Are on the Sideline

New and untested players, some backed by Wall Street, have helped borrowers pile up billions in loans. What could go wrong?

By Matt Phillips


A decade after reckless home lending nearly destroyed the financial system, the business of making risky loans is back.

This time the money is bypassing the traditional, and heavily regulated, banking system and flowing through a growing network of businesses that stepped in to provide loans to parts of the economy that banks abandoned after 2008.

It’s called shadow banking, and it is a key source of the credit that drives the American economy. With almost $15 trillion in assets, the shadow-banking sector in the United States is roughly the same size as the entire banking system of Britain, the world’s fifth-largest economy.

In certain areas — including mortgages, auto lending and some business loans — shadow banks have eclipsed traditional banks, which have spent much of the last decade pulling back on lending in the face of stricter regulatory standards aimed at keeping them out of trouble.  
But new problems arise when the industry depends on lenders that compete aggressively, operate with less of a cushion against losses and have fewer regulations to keep them from taking on too much risk. Recently, a chorus of industry officials and policymakers — including the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, last month — have started to signal that they’re watching the growth of riskier lending by these non-banks.
“We decided to regulate the banks, hoping for a more stable financial system, which doesn’t take as many risks,” said Amit Seru, a professor of finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “Where the banks retreated, shadow banks stepped in.”

Safe as houses

With roughly 50 million residential properties, and $10 trillion in amassed debt, the American mortgage market is the largest source of consumer lending on earth.

Lately, that lending is coming from companies like Quicken Loans, loanDepot and Caliber Home Loans. Between 2009 and 2018, the share of mortgage loans made by these businesses and others like them soared from 9 percent to more than 52 percent, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication.

8 Reasons a Huge Gold Mania Is About to Begin

by Nick Giambruno




An epic gold bull market is on the menu for 2019.

I'm not talking about a garden-variety cyclical gold bull market, but rather one of the biggest gold manias in history.

This gold mania will be riding the wave of an incredibly powerful trend... the re-monetization of gold.

The last time the international monetary system experienced a paradigm shift of this magnitude was in 1971.

Then, the dollar price of gold skyrocketed over 2,300%.

It shot from $35 per ounce to a high of $850 in 1980. Gold mining stocks did even better.

Today, gold is still bouncing around its lows. Gold mining stocks are still very cheap. I expect returns to be at least as great as they were during the last paradigm shift.

So let's get right into it, starting with the first four catalysts that will send gold prices higher…

No. 1: Basel III Moves Gold Closer to Officially Being Money Again

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is located in Basel, Switzerland. It's often referred to as "the bank of central banks." Its members consist of 60 central banks from the world's largest economies.

It facilitates transactions – notably gold transactions – between central banks, the biggest players in the gold market.

The BIS also issues Basel Accords, or a set of recommendations for regulations that set the standards for the global banking industry.

On April 1, 2019, Basel III went into effect around the world.

Buried among what was mostly confusing jargon was something of huge significance for gold:

A 0% risk weight will apply to (i) cash owned and held at the bank or in transit; and (ii) gold bullion held at the bank or held in another bank on an allocated basis, to the extent the gold bullion assets are backed by gold bullion liabilities.

What this means in plain English is that gold's official role in the international monetary system has been upgraded for the first time in decades.

Banks can now consider physical gold they hold, in certain circumstances, as a 0% risk asset. Previously, gold was considered riskier and most of the time could not be classified in this way. Basel III rules are making gold more attractive.

Central bankers and mainstream economists have ridiculed gold for going on 50 years now.

They've tried to downplay its role in favor of fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar. They've tried to trick people into believing it isn't important.

The fact is gold is real money... a form of money that is far superior to rapidly depreciating paper currencies. This is why central bankers don't want to acknowledge how important it is.

And this is precisely why Basel III is important. It signifies the start of a reversal in attitude and policy.

Basel III is giving gold more official recognition in the international financial system. It represents a step towards the re-monetization of gold... and the recognition of this powerful trend in motion.

No. 2: Central Banks Are Buying Record Amounts of Gold

Countries are treating gold as money for the first time in generations...

In 2010, something remarkable happened. Central banks changed from being net sellers of gold to net buyers of gold. Remember, central banks are by far the biggest actors in the global gold market.

This trend has only accelerated since...

The World Gold Council reports that in 2018, central banks bought a record 651 tonnes of gold. This is the highest level of net purchases since 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window.

And it's a 75% increase from 2017.




Russia Was the Biggest Buyer


Russia's gold reserves have quadrupled in the last decade, making it the fifth-largest holder of gold in the world.

Last year, Russia notably dumped nearly $100 billion worth of U.S. Treasuries, and, according to the World Gold Council, replaced much of it with gold.

If this trend continues, and I expect that it will, Russia will soon become the third-largest gold holder in the world.




A major reason for Russia's gold purchases is to reduce its reliance on the U.S. dollar and exposure to U.S. financial sanctions.

It is providing a template for others to do the same, using gold as money.

For example, in 2016, news broke that Turkey and Iran were engaged in a "gas for gold" plan.

Iran is under U.S. sanctions. Through the plan, Turkey can pay for gas imported from Iran with gold.

Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and others are proving they don't need the U.S. dollar. They are conducting business and settling trade with gold shipments, which aren't under the control of the U.S. government.

This is how gold will benefit from the U.S. government using the dollar as a financial weapon.

No. 3: Oil for Gold- China's Golden Alternative

In 2017, when tensions with North Korea were rising, Trump's Treasury secretary threatened to kick China out of the U.S. dollar system if it didn't crack down on North Korea.

If the threat had been carried out, it would have been the financial equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on Beijing.

Without access to dollars, China would struggle to import oil and engage in international trade.

Its economy would come to a grinding halt.

China would rather not depend on an adversary like this. This is one of the main reasons it created what I call the "Golden Alternative."

Last year, the Shanghai International Energy Exchange launched a crude oil futures contract denominated in Chinese yuan. For the first time in the post-World War II era, it will allow for large oil transactions outside of the U.S. dollar.

Of course, most oil producers don't want a large reserve of yuan.

That's why China has explicitly linked the crude futures contract with the ability to convert yuan into physical gold – without touching the Chinese government's official reserves – through gold exchanges in Shanghai and Hong Kong. (Shanghai is already the world's largest physical gold market.)

Bottom line, China's Golden Alternative will allow oil producers to sell oil for gold and completely bypass any restrictions, regulations, or sanctions of the U.S. financial system.

With China's Golden Alternative, a lot of oil money is going to flow into yuan and gold instead of dollars and Treasuries.

CNBC estimates that the amount of redirected oil money will eventually hit $600-$800 billion. Much of this will flow into the gold market, which itself is only $170 billion.




Consider this...

China is the world's largest importer of oil.

So far this year, China has imported an average of around 9.8 million barrels of oil per day.

This number is expected to grow at least 10% per year.

Right now, oil is hovering around $60 per barrel. That means China is spending around $588 million per day to import oil.

Gold is currently priced around $1,330 an ounce.

That means every day, China is importing oil worth over 442,105 ounces of gold.

If we're conservative and assume that just half of Chinese imports will be purchased in gold soon, it translates into increased demand of more than 80 million ounces per year – or more than 70% of gold's annual production.

This shift hasn't been priced into the gold price. When it happens, the increased demand for gold from China's Golden Alternative is going to shock the gold market.

The bottom line is, China's Golden Alternative is a big step towards gold's re-monetization.

No. 4: The Fed's Dramatic Capitulation

In the wake of the 2008 crash, the Federal Reserve instituted several emergency measures. The chairman at the time, Bernanke, promised Congress they would be temporary.

This included money-printing programs euphemistically called "quantitative easing" (QE).

Through QE, the Fed created $3.7 trillion out of thin air.

That newly created money was used to buy mainly government bonds, which sat on the Fed's bloated balance sheet.

The Fed also brought interest rates to the lowest levels in U.S. history. The Fed artificially brought rates down to 0% and kept them there for over six years.

Capitalism's Most Important Price

Remember, interest rates are simply the price of borrowing money (debt). They have an enormous impact on banks, the real estate market, and the auto industry, among others.

In 2016, the Fed began its attempt to "normalize" its monetary policy by raising interest rates and reducing the size of its balance sheet to more historically normal levels. By doing so, the Fed was reversing the emergency measures put in place after the 2008 crisis.

Interest rates have risen from 0% to around 2.5%, and the Fed has drained over $500 billion from its balance sheet, or about 11% from its peak.

But then, the stock market tanked...

The S&P 500 peaked at 2,930 in late September 2018. By late December, it had crashed over 19% and appeared to be headed sharply lower.

It was the worst December in stock market history, except for December 1931, which was during the Great Depression.

That spooked the Fed into its most abrupt change in monetary policy in recent history.

Instead of normalizing monetary policy and removing the so-called "temporary" and "emergency" measures in place since 2008 – as it had long planned to do – the Fed capitulated.

Earlier this year, the Fed announced it would not raise interest rates in 2019.

The Fed also announced it would phase out its balance sheet reduction program in the fall.

Previously, the Fed was slowly winding down its balance sheet by about $30 billion a month. At such a snail's pace, it would have taken the Fed over 10 years to drain its balance sheet back to its pre-crisis normal level.

Hooked on Easy Money

This whole charade is indicative of how utterly dependent the U.S. economy has become on artificially low interest rates and easy money.

If the Fed couldn't normalize interest rates when the debt was $22 trillion, how is it ever going to raise rates when the debt is $30 trillion or higher?

The Fed couldn't shrink a $4.5 trillion balance sheet. How is it going to shrink, say, a $10 trillion balance sheet or higher?

The answer is it can't and won't. It's impossible for the U.S. government to normalize interest rates with an abnormal amount of debt. The Fed is trapped.

After nearly six years of 0% interest rates, the U.S. economy is hooked on the heroin of easy money. It can't even tolerate a modest reduction in the Fed's balance sheet and 2.5% interest rates, still far below historical averages.

In other words, this monetary tightening cycle is over. The next move is a return to QE and 0%, and perhaps negative, interest rates. These moves would, of course, weaken the dollar and be good for gold.

By flipping from tightening to signaling future easing, the Fed has turned a major headwind for the gold market into a tailwind.

(Stay tuned for part 2.)

China’s Property Developers Have a 1.25 Billion-Square-Meter Problem

Real-estate giants have become overly reliant on funding from sales of houses they haven’t built

By Mike Bird

The Mixed Blessing Of Falling Birth Rates

by John Rubino

Let’s begin with some charts from today’s Wall Street Journal. The first shows women waiting longer to have kids, with the average age for first birth rising from 21 in 1968 to 26 today:




The second shows the result, which is plunging birth rates among younger age groups:






This is due to a few (admittedly somewhat contradictory) things. First, college-educated women tend to make more money, which raises the opportunity cost of starting a family. Second, soaring student debt for those same college graduates makes work more necessary and the added expense of kids more terrifying. Third, the rise of the gig economy makes Millennial finances more precarious than for any other post-Depression generation, leading many to feel too overwhelmed to even consider starting a family. Fourth, kids are obnoxious (sorry, that’s just me venting about some hopefully very temporary family stuff).

Add it all up, and Americans (along with Japanese, Germans, and Italians) are having too few kids to replace their existing populations.

Immigration will no doubt take up some of the resulting slack, but not all of it because new arrivals soon adopt their host country’s breeding attitude. In the US, for instance, Hispanic birth rates are falling faster than for non-Hispanics.

Falling birth rates seem to be the new normal, with shrinking populations not far behind. In a wildly overcrowded world (watch the following video if you doubt the truth of this) …





… fewer humans solve a lot of problems. But why write about this trend in a gloom-and-doom finance blog? Because of the impact of falling working-age populations on the global financial system. The only way for Millennials to pay for Boomers’ Social Security and Medicare would be for the latter to confiscate 90% of the former’s paychecks. That won’t happen, so something else has to, most likely massive benefit cuts via hidden inflation.

In other words, we aggressively depreciate the dollar (and euro and yen) while raising retirement benefits by some fraction of that rate, thus stiffing retirees in a way that many won’t notice, at least for a while.

The side effect of this purposeful inflation will be a massive shift of capital out of financial assets like government bonds that depend for their value on the stability of the underlying currency, and into real assets like oil wells, farmland and precious metals which governments can’t create with a mouse click. So buy gold, sit back and enjoy the show.

Canada pension plan chief warns over illiquid private assets   
It is hard to sell the private stuff in a downturn, says Mark Machin of CPPIB

 Jennifer Thompson in London

    
Mark Machin: private assets were among the top performers for CPPIB (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
 

The head of one of the world’s biggest retirement funds has warned that investors are becoming too exposed to private assets whose liquidity could prove a problem in the event of a downturn.

Institutional investors such as pension funds have increased exposure to assets such as infrastructure, real estate and private equity in the quest for better returns at a time of record-low interest rates.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with private assets or private equity [but] it's very hard to sell the private stuff in a downturn,” said Mark Machin, chief executive of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board which oversees C$392bn ($291bn) in assets. “My warning is you have to be really careful on how much you load up.”

About half of the Toronto group’s assets are invested privately, a heavy weighting with which Mr Machin is comfortable.

Private assets were among the top performers for CPPIB as it reported annual results for the year ending in March. Private equity in companies based in developed markets outside Canada was the best-performing asset class, with a gross return of 18 per cent compared with 16 per cent the previous year. Infrastructure returned 14 per cent compared with 15.2 per cent the previous year.

In common with other Canadian pension funds, CPPIB is known for being a proponent of “direct investment”, where it bypasses intermediaries to make deals or buyouts. Recent investments include about $750m in Aqua America, a US water company.

CPPIB is also part of a consortium led by private equity firms Apax and Warburg Pincus that plans to return Inmarsat, Britain’s largest satellite company, to private ownership in a deal that values the group at about $6bn including debt.

Overall, CPPIB reported a dip in annual returns after a rocky period for global markets towards the end of 2018. It posted a net return of 8.95 per cent for 2018-19, down from 11.6 per cent the previous year.

Mr Machin had previously warned of lower returns, saying the prospect of double-digit returns year on year was “too optimistic”. He said it was a good result but added that renewed trade tension between Washington and Beijing was causing uncertainty.

“You’ve got rising geopolitical tensions that are very difficult to price,” he said. “The tension between the number one and number two economies doesn’t help anybody.

“We’re probably going to see rising volatility and less robust returns from here.”

Mr Machin's total pay for the year rose 10 per cent to C$5.76m, including deferred awards.

Assets at CPPIB rose C$35.9bn. Much of this was derived from profits generated by the fund’s investment activities, with C$3.9bn coming from contributions made by pension savers. The group’s overall assets rose 10 per cent year on year. Fees paid to external investment managers fell C$152m to C$1.59bn because of lower performance fees.

CPPIB was formed 20 years ago to build a reserve fund to support the Canada Pension Plan, the country’s largest retirement fund with 20m contributors and beneficiaries.