NEWSLETTER of July 3, 2026

The following content has been added at finexpert:

KfW Research
UNTERNEHMENSBEFRAGUNG 2026: FINANZIERUNGSKLIMA EINGETRÜBT – INVESTITIONSTÄTIGKEIT ZURÜCKHALTEND
The economic situation facing businesses in Germany remains challenging. Many companies had to cope with a decline in demand last year, which is increasingly putting a strain on their capital structure. This is shown by the results of the 2026 Business Survey, which KfW Research conducted in collaboration with 19 leading, sector-specific and regional business associations. At the same time, the financing climate deteriorated further last year, whilst demand for credit declined – partly as a result of subdued investment activity. The proportion of companies making investments was significantly lower than in previous recessionary periods. Although 92 per cent of respondents state that they have investment needs in principle, there are currently no signs of a noticeable upturn in investment activity in the coming months. According to the companies, improved framework conditions are needed above all to provide the necessary impetus. >more

Deutsche Bank Research
KREDITGESCHÄFT IN Q1 2026 WEITER IN DER SEITWÄRTSBEWEGUNG, KONJUNKTUR MIT SONDERFAKTOREN
The lending market remains virtually stagnant due to numerous headwinds. The volume of lending to businesses and the self-employed rose only slightly in Q1 – normally the strongest quarter of the year – by EUR 7.1 billion or 0.4 per cent. In nominal terms, it is just 0.9 per cent higher than a year ago; in real terms, this represents a continued decline. Germany is thus also falling increasingly behind the other eurozone countries. In terms of maturities and banking groups, there has recently been a convergence in growth rates; by sector, industry continues to underperform the services sector. Overall, the loan book is shrinking in almost half of all sectors (volume-weighted). >more

Allianz Research
CREDIT RISK RELOCATED, NOT REMOVED: NEWTON’S CRADLE TRANSMITTING RISK ACROSS BBB, HY, AND PRIVATE CREDIT
US credit looks calm on the surface – spreads tight, headline growth cheerful – but the risk has simply migrated. Investment grade (IG), high yield (HY) and private credit are one continuous risk-transfer chain and at every link price has decoupled from fundamentals through a different mechanism: spread compression in IG, weakest links bypassing public HY and net asset value (NAV) smoothing in private credit. Softened IG fundamentals and fallen-angel risk expose up to 1/3 of spread. US IG spreads sit at ~75bps – tighter than their pre-Iran-war level – even as credit quality has softened, held tight by price-insensitive all-in-yield demand rather than by fundamentals. The specific danger sits at the bottom of IG: a fallen-angel downgrade forces index-constrained holders to sell into a smaller, less liquid HY market, producing spread moves that far exceed the change in credit quality. In stress case like 2020, downgrades eroded 25bps of excess return, which would be equivalent to ~1/3 of current spread. >more

Kiel Institut für Weltwirtschaft (IfW Kiel)
GREIX KAUFPREISINDEX Q1 2026: HETEROGENE PREISDYNAMIK BEI RÜCKLÄUFIGER MARKTLIQUIDITÄT
Purchase prices for residential property showed mixed trends in the first quarter of 2026: growth in the price of flats fell to its lowest level since the upward trend began in the summer of 2024, whilst detached houses rose by 3.2 per cent compared with the same quarter of the previous year. New liquidity indicators derived from property listing data based on the VALUE market database also suggest that market liquidity is waning. This is demonstrated by the latest update to the GREIX Purchase Price Index, a joint project of the Expert Committees on Land Values and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. >more

PRICING OF CORPORATE BONDS: EVIDENCE FROM A CENTURY-LONG CROSS-SECTION
Mohammad Ghaderi, Sebastien Plante, Nikolai L. Roussanov, and Sang Byung Seo
2025
We construct a new historical corporate bond database spanning 128 calendar years to address longstanding data limitations hampering corporate bond research. By hand-collecting monthly corporate bond quotes from three archival print sources, we complement existing datasets and create an extensive database dating back to 1895, comprising nearly 110,000 unique bonds and 8 million observations. Leveraging this expanded sample, we find that the lack of priced risks in corporate bonds documented by recent studies stems from their reliance on short samples. With greater statistical power, we show that prominent bond and stock factors as well as several nontraded macroeconomic factors are significantly priced with theoretically consistent signs. At the same time, the predictive power of corporate bond spreads for real activity is largely robust in the longer sample, except when prewar data are included. >more

NGO ACTIVISM: EXPOSURE VS. INFLUENCE
Michele Fioretti, Victor Saint-Jean, and Simon Smith
2025
We analyze the timing of NGO campaigns to shed light on NGOs' strategies and how they evolve over time. Data from 2,500 campaigns show that NGOs are six times more likely to launch campaigns on their target's Annual General Meeting (AGM) date. Although this strategy increases media exposure and stakeholder scrutiny, resulting in consumer backlash and related shareholder proposals at the following AGM of the targeted firm, it has no impact on current AGM votes. As NGOs build reputational capital, they adjust their timing to influence AGM votes, revealing the trade-offs they face to drive corporate change. >more