Finance Archives

Finance

Buying Credibility: The Hiking Cycle That Keeps Indonesia’s Convergence Funded

Three increases since May, 100 basis points in all, one of them off-cycle. Bank Indonesia has charged domestic borrowers a visible price to keep real yields attractive, portfolio money flowing and Indonesia’s long convergence run financed. July’s surprise hold now

Free, Capped and Contagious: Why a US Tariff Could Not Stop Pix Going Global

Brazil’s public payments rail has been named in a US Section 301 tariff action for the very design choices that made it ubiquitous. It has come through that first geopolitical stress test with its model untouched and dozens of central

Earning Through a War: UAE Lenders Bank Records in a Quarter of Conflict

UAE lenders posted record first-half profits through a quarter of regional war, Hormuz shipping disruption and rate uncertainty. At bank level, the numbers point to Gulf banking earnings decoupling from oil and conflict, and to capital beginning to flow out

Singapore: Where the AI Capex Boom Becomes GDP

Singapore’s advance estimate puts second-quarter growth at 5.7 per cent, with manufacturing up 12.2 per cent on what the trade ministry attributes to AI-related demand for chips and chip-making equipment. It is the cleanest primary-source evidence yet that the AI

AI and the US Workforce: The Beige Book Tells a Productivity Story

The Federal Reserve’s July Beige Book catches AI arriving in the American labour market as investment: firms buying the tools, reallocating the tasks and holding the headcount. Jamie Dimon’s 30 to 40 per cent is the counterweight that reading must

Heat on Contract: Industrial Storage Turns Cheap Hours into a Bankable Asset

Brick, carbon and molten-salt stores are moving industrial heat from the fuel bill to the balance sheet. The interesting part is not the hardware. It is the contracts now being written on it. In May, the American biofuels producer POET

The Safety of the System: Why the Restaurant Franchise is Hospitality’s 2026 Safe Haven

In an era of volatile supply chains and discerning diners, the lone wolf restaurateur is an endangered species. As 2026 unfolds, we examine why the franchise model has transformed from a corporate “cookie-cutter” cliché into a structured defence against industry

JPMorgan Signals Caution: Tightening Private Credit Amid Software Loan Repricing

JPMorgan Chase’s decision to tighten lending to private credit funds marks a notable inflection point for one of the fastest-growing segments of global finance. As the world’s largest bank by assets reins in exposure, particularly to software-linked loans, the move

The Mastermind: How Taylor Swift Rewrote the Rules of the Global Economy

She does not just top the charts; she moves the needle on national GDPs. From the $2bn Eras Tour to the unprecedented reclaiming of her intellectual property, Taylor Swift has built a $1.6bn empire on the radical idea that the

La Trobe Financial: The Difference Is Discipline

In an era defined by rapid product proliferation and an ever-expanding universe of investment ideas, one principle continues to separate lasting performance from fleeting opportunity: discipline. For more than seven decades, Australian asset manager La Trobe Financial has built its