NEWSLETTER of September 17, 2021

The following content has been added at finexpert:

Strategy&
HOW INSURERS CAN DESIGN FOR AGILITY AND EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY
By their very nature insurance companies are large established businesses that tend to be rather rigid. As stability is crucial in the industry, many insurers find it difficult to react to short-term changes in the competitive environment. How can insurers redesign their companies to embed agility and stay ahead of the game? How can they embrace uncertainty in a volatile world? In this article I will share some of the traits and benefits of agile companies, best practice examples, and how to kick off an agile transformation. >more

Deloitte
FINANCIAL MARKETS INTERIM REGULATORY OUTLOOK 2021
The mid-year assessment, prepared by Deloitte's EMEA Centre for Regulatory Strategy, examines how current trends and regulatory issues will shape the financial services industry for the remainder of 2021. >more

Kirchhoff Consult
ESG IN IPO PROSPEKTEN
Hamburg-based financial and corporate communications agency Kirchhoff Consult AG used a data-driven approach to examine ESG reporting in the securities prospectuses of 24 companies that began listing in the regulated Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2018 or 2021. The results of the study clearly show that the relevance of ESG disclosures in IPO prospectuses has strongly increased on the German capital market. >more

CMS Hasche Sigle
UPDATE ARBEITSRECHT SEPTEMBER 2021
In the period from March to May 2022, all employees entitled to vote may elect their works council. But if you thought "the same procedure as every time", you should know that there will be some changes. For one thing, the Works Council Modernization Act, which recently came into force, provides for a number of simplifications in the election process. >more

FOREIGN EXCHANGE VOLUME
Giovanni Cespa, Antonio Gargano, Steven Riddiough, and Lucio Sarno
2021
We investigate the information contained in foreign exchange (FX) volume using a novel dataset from the over-the-counter market. We find that volume helps predict next day currency returns and is economically valuable for currency investors. Predictability implies a stronger currency return reversal for currency pairs with abnormally low volume today, and is driven by the component of FX volume unrelated to volatility, illiquidity, and order flow. We rationalize these findings via a simple model of exchange rate determination, in which volume helps reveal the degree of asymmetric information in currency markets. Testing this prediction shows that asymmetric information is uniform across currency pairs but varies across instruments. >more

TALENT IN DISTRESSED FIRMS: INVESTIGATING THE LABOR COSTS OF FINANCIAL DISTRESS
Ramin Baghai, Rui Silva, Viktor Thell, and Vikrant Vig
2020
The importance of skilled labor and the inalienability of human capital expose firms to the risk of losing talent in critical times. Using Swedish micro-data, we document that firms lose workers with the highest cognitive and noncognitive skills as they approach bankruptcy. In a quasi-experiment, we confirm that financial distress is driving these results: following a negative export shock caused by exogenous currency movements, talent abandons the firm, but only if the exporter is highly leveraged. Consistent with talent dependence being associated with higher labor costs of financial distress, firms that rely more on talent have more conservative capital structures. >more