World coronavirus dispatch: Foreign direct investment to plunge 40%

Richest soccer league is back, Oscars delayed until April, and Travis Perkins to slash 2,500 jobs

Foreign direct investment to plunge as much as 40 per cent, UN projects: The United Nations forecasts foreign direct investment globally will fall by as much as 40 per cent this year due to the coronavirus pandemic and continue to slump in 2021, hitting developing nations hardest. The lock-down measures are slowing investment projects and will lead multinational companies to reassess plans, according to a report released Tuesday by the UN’s trade and development arm. FDI will drop 30 per cent to 40 per cent this year and won’t begin to recover until 2022, and then only slow-ly, the agency said. Read more here.

Let’s look at the global statistics:

Total Confirmed Cases: 8,044,839

Change Over Yesterday: 1,30,651

Total Deaths: 437,137

Total Recovered: 3,883,390

Nations hit with most cases: US (2,114,026), Brazil (2,114,026), Russia (544,725), India (343,091), and United Kingdom (298,315)

Source: Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center

Swiss commodity traders return to desks and jets as virus wanes: In the commodity-trading cap-ital of the world, employees at most of the biggest companies are returning to their offices and some are even venturing back into the skies for business flights. Geneva, home to many of the largest merchants of oil, grains and metals, didn’t dodge an outbreak of Covid-19, but Switzerland as a whole has brought the virus under control much faster than other global trading hubs. Read more here.

UK jobless claims double to almost 3 million amid lockdown: U.K. jobless claims more than dou-bled to almost three million during the virus lockdown, adding urgency to the Bank of England and government’s efforts to cushion the blow. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits increased by more than 1.5 million in the two months through May, the Office for National Statis-tics said Tuesday. Read more here.

BOJ’s Kuroda sees interest rate staying ultralow into 2023: Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said interest rates would likely remain ultralow into 2023 and warned that the pandemic could end up having a longer-than-expected impact on the economy. The central bank chief said that firms were still under severe financing stress, adding that he was determined to support busi-nesses with lending for as long as needed during the crisis. Read more here.
 

Oscars delayed until April after virus upends Hollywood: The next Oscars ceremony will be in April, two months later than originally planned, to give films delayed by the coronavirus pandemic a better shot at the industry’s most prestigious awards. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sci-ences and Walt Disney Co’s ABC will air the 93rd Academy Awards on April 25. Films that premi-ere before Feb 28 will now be eligible to compete. Normally, the ceremony is held in February and only movies that came out during the previous calendar year are considered. Read more here.

Richest soccer league is back and on more screens than ever: England’s Premier League, the world’s wealthiest soccer competition, returns on Wednesday and organisers are trying everything to claw back viewers and mend the damage from coronavirus. Live Saturday afternoon matches that the league has always banned from TV screens to protect stadium ticket sales will be shown. Viewers will be able to see every remaining match of the season, instead of the usual limited selec-tion. Read more here.

Travis Perkins to slash 2,500 jobs: The UK’s largest builders’ merchant Travis Perkins is slashing 2,500 jobs and closing 165 stores as it forecast a lasting recession that would weigh heavily on de-mand for construction materials. The actions, which the company described as “regrettable but nec-essary”, will shed close to 10 per cent of the workforce and a similar proportion of shops, including branches of Wickes and Toolstation. Read more here.

JLR to cut 1,000 jobs as carmaker reels from pound 500m Covid-19 hit: Jaguar Land Rover plans to cut more than 1,000 UK jobs as Britain’s largest carmaker tries to save another pound 1 billion to cope with the fallout from the coronavirus crisis. The company said on Monday that it slumped to a pound 422 million pre-tax loss in the year to March, with a £500 million pre-tax loss in the final quarter as the pandemic forced showrooms and factories to shut across the world. Read more here.

Specials
 

Striking’ crisis gap exposed as Swedish economy stands out: There’s one country whose economy looks set to fare better than others when it comes to the fallout of Covid-19: Sweden. In a re-port on Monday, Capital Economics presented data that give Sweden an irrefutable edge. From peak to trough, Swedish GDP will shrink by eight per cent; in the UK and Italy, the contraction is somewhere between 25 per cent and 30 per cent, according to estimates covering the fourth quarter of 2019 through to the second quarter of 2020. The US is somewhere in the middle, it said. Read more here.

The pandemic closed art galleries' doors. But who said a gallery needs four walls and a ceiling? The pandemic has made the gallery even more inaccessible, at least temporarily, inspiring curators and creators to reimagine how art might be shared. But while today’s circumstances are new, artists’ efforts to think beyond such restrictions are not. Read more here.

How to soothe your 'Re-entry anxiety' as COVID-19 lockdowns lift: When Covid-19 began spreading in the US, Dan Kerber was drawn to the data. The 48-year-old from Plano, Texas read about case counts and projections every day, keeping his team at the telecommunications company Ericsson up to date on the latest news. So in May, when states including Texas began to reo-pen before the data showed it was time to do so, Kerber began to get nervous. When Covid-19 lockdowns were first instituted, it felt, for many people, unfathomable to stay home nearly 24/7. But for people, it now feels equally strange—and nerve-wracking—to do anything else after months cocooned inside. Psychologists have dubbed the phenomenon “re-entry anxiety.” Read more here.

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