NEWSLETTER of September 11, 2026

The following content has been added at finexpert:

European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA)
FINANCIAL STABILITY REPORT – JUNE 2026
European insurers and occupational pension funds remain resilient, but EIOPA identifies a demanding combination of moderate growth, geopolitical uncertainty and structural change. The report analyses market and credit risks, solvency positions and liquidity conditions and adds detailed assessments of geopolitical shocks, private-market exposures, artificial intelligence and interconnectedness. It finds that insurers' direct private-market allocations remain manageable overall, although valuation uncertainty and links through funds require close monitoring. The analysis also shows how greater use of AI can improve underwriting and operations while creating model, cyber and concentration risks. For German institutions, the report offers a European supervisory benchmark for balance-sheet resilience and emerging risk management priorities. >more

European Investment Bank
INVESTMENT REPORT 2025/2026: CAPITALISING ON EUROPE'S STRENGTHS
EU corporate investment has remained broadly stable in real terms despite high uncertainty, but the EIB argues that Europe now needs a decisive acceleration in private investment. Fragmentation of the single market remains a central obstacle: 62% of EU firms report difficulties when exporting to other member states, and removing these barriers could raise firms' investment intensity by 10%. The report also estimates that AI has accounted for about 12% of EU productivity growth since 2019. Effective public instruments can mobilise substantial private capital: one euro of InvestEU guarantees generates an estimated EUR 15 of real-economy investment, while firms receiving EIB loans invest 15% more than comparable companies. >more

European Commission
2026 COUNTRY REPORT – GERMANY
The European Commission diagnoses Germany's weak medium-term growth as a combination of subdued productivity, ageing-related labour constraints, high energy costs and persistent underinvestment. It highlights the need to improve public-investment execution, reduce administrative burdens, strengthen competition and deepen financing options for innovative companies. The report also assesses fiscal developments, housing, skills, digitalisation and the green transition, linking national reform needs to European competitiveness. Germany's new infrastructure and defence spending capacity creates an opportunity to modernise the capital stock, but implementation bottlenecks and the quality of expenditure will determine the impact. The annexes provide detailed indicators and policy assessments for comparing Germany with other EU economies. >more

KfW Research
DER FINANZPLAN DER BUNDESREGIERUNG
With the government’s draft budget for 2027 and the financial plan through 2030, the federal government has established the fiscal policy framework for the coming years. This chartbook provides an overview of the planned expenditure trends, including special funds, and illustrates how rising defense and investment spending go hand in hand with significant pressure to consolidate spending in other areas. It also explains the distribution of spending and the growth in spending over recent years: by far the largest item remains support payments to households. Demographic aging, in particular, is driving spending pressure in this area. However, growth in defense spending and corporate subsidies—primarily energy price subsidies—was even more rapid. Finally, the report outlines various scenarios for the development of the public debt-to-GDP ratio. >more

PAY VERSUS PERFORMANCE AND INVESTOR VOTING DECISIONS
Aiyesha Dey, Berk A. Sensoy, Austin Starkweather, and Joshua White
2026
We analyze whether the SEC’s Pay Versus Performance (PVP) disclosure rule lowers the cost of processing CEO-pay information. Using hand-collected disclosures, we show that larger divergences between the newly disclosed compensation actually paid (CAP) and already required pay disclosure methods correlate with changes in voting support for Say-on-Pay and compensation committee directors, especially when compensation is harder to evaluate. Placebo tests using CAP that firms disclosed only retroactively, and that investors had not yet observed, reveal no comparable association in the prior year, supporting a disclosure-driven interpretation. Investors respond negatively when CAP is high relative to traditional reported pay and stock returns are weak, consistent with concerns about pay-performance misalignment. These inferences hold for the Big Three institutional investors and proxy advisors, suggesting that PVP disclosures also inform sophisticated investors and information intermediaries. Overall, the PVP rule appears to improve the decision-usefulness of CEO-pay disclosures by lowering information processing costs for capital market participants. >more

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE BOARDROOM
Daniel Ferreira, and Jin Li
2026
We analyze how the use of artificial intelligence affects the monitoring and advisory relationship between CEOs and corporate boards. AI can serve as a private advisor to CEOs, partially substituting for board advice, and thus reducing CEOs' incentives to share information with directors.  In equilibrium, firms respond by reducing board independence to restore information flows. Lower monitoring intensity decreases CEO turnover, making CEOs more entrenched. Lower dismissal risk allows firms to reduce CEO compensation. We show that AI adoption by the board mitigates some of the negative aspects of the CEO's AI use, but cannot restore efficient levels of board monitoring. Our analysis suggests that AI adoption in the boardroom may have unintended consequences for corporate governance. >more