Thought Leadership

As governments around the world start to ease restrictions on lockdowns, attention inevitably turns to the concept of “returning to work.” However, this viewpoint incorrectly frames the current state of play. Many office-based workers have continued to work through the pandemic and so the focus should actually be on who should go “back to the office?” Of course, the first focus has to be on employee wellbeing and vulnerable employees need to remain safe.  But after that, the situation becomes more blurred,

We are happy to share our member, MSCI, model: MSCI Real Estate Climate Value-at-Risk (Climate VaR) model that demonstrates how the nature and magnitude of physical risks may differ across assets and portfolios; and highlight the importance of considering.

As the world struggles to contain the COVID-19 outbreak, global travel has practically ground to a halt, impacting retail and travel related industries. Estimates by the United Nations point to the global economy slowing to under 2 per cent in 2020, costing some USD 1 trillion. There has not been any precedent with an equivalent scale of economic disruption in recent times to guide policymakers across the globe. The typical responses to this outbreak across the world thus far involve containment, social distancing, and economic support through fiscal and monetary measures to help cushion the financial fallout. The World Bank, for example, has set aside a USD 14 billion package to help companies and countries in their efforts to fight the spread of COVID-19.

In the past decade, the rise and fall of mainland Chinese investment in global real estate markets has created quite a stir amongst the international real estate community. However, in recent years overseas real estate investment activities of this group of investors has shifted from overseas acquisitions to disposals, with 2019’s total overseas investment volume down 79% since the peak in 2017.