Global Finance, April 2019

Governments around the world may be dawdling in the drive for a greener planet, but private corporations are picking up the pace—at least in switching to renewable energy sources. So-called power purchase agreements (PPAs) for clean electricity more than doubled globally last year, to 13.4 gigawatts (GW), according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. Well-known new-economy consumers like Facebook and Google are joining old-school industrialists like Norsk Hydro and Alcoa in sourcing more solar and wind power. Even oil giant Exxon Mobil contracted for 575 megawatts (MW) of renewables on the windy plains of Texas.

Global Finance, April 2019

Governments around the world may be dawdling in the drive for a greener planet, but private corporations are picking up the pace—at least in switching to renewable energy sources. So-called power purchase agreements (PPAs) for clean electricity more than doubled globally last year, to 13.4 gigawatts (GW), according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. Well-known new-economy consumers like Facebook and Google are joining old-school industrialists like Norsk Hydro and Alcoa in sourcing more solar and wind power. Even oil giant Exxon Mobil contracted for 575 megawatts (MW) of renewables on the windy plains of Texas.

Barron’s, May 14, 2016

Low oil prices are obviously bad for some emerging markets, such as Russia and Brazil. But they should be good for most of them, including India and China. Crude exporters represent just 20% of the global MSCI Emerging Markets Index, says Marcus Svedberg, chief economist at East Capital in Stockholm.

Markets have ignored this logic, however. Emerging market indexes have plummeted since the great oil crash began in mid-2014, and only started to recover as crude prices rebounded recently. Analysts who waited on an oil dividend for the developing world are giving up hope. “If you haven’t seen it for more than 20 months, you probably won’t see it now,” says John Baffes, who oversees the World Bank’s commodities forecasting. Here’s why:

OCT 20, 2015

Shale oil drillers squeezed by crashing prices and mountainous debt make a tempting target for well-funded private equity and industry investors. “Oil is the biggest investment opportunity in the world,” Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of top private equity financier Blackstone Group, declared at last winter’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Institutional Investor,  Oct 22, 2015

Emerging-markets debt has reached worrying levels again, but the focus of anxiety is different than it was during the crises of the 1980s and ’90s. Sovereign states have largely heeded the lessons learned from those debacles. Much unlike their developed-world peers, they’ve held debt steady since 2000, at about 40 percent of gross domestic product, according to the Institute of International Finance in Washington.

July 18, 2015

The biggest ripple for investors from the landmark July 14 agreement that could free Iran from international economic sanctions in return for curtailing its nuclear program will be felt in the oil markets. They didn’t take the news well. The price of Brent crude fell 2.5%, to $57.06 a barrel, from what was already close to a four-month low, before falling a bit further later in the week.