The news round-up: Danes get paid to borrow

Shaky road ahead. The head of the US’ third-largest pension fund weighs in with those who reckon that this summer’s stock market volatility is here to stay – unless the trade tussle between the US and China comes to an end. Anastatia Titarchuk leads the New York State Common Retirement Fund, and is interviewed by Marketwatch.

Jyske will pay you when you borrow. Negative interest rates are breaking another boundary, as reverse payments are now becoming part also of the consumer home mortgage landscape. The Guardian describes how Denmark’s Jyske Bank effectively pays its borrowers 0.5 percent per year – and the challenges that comes with it. The business is backed by the even higher payments that the bank receives from its institutional creditors.

Yes, we’ll get more done. The opportunities to radically improve treasury management through technology are clearly trickling down from large corporations to the mid-market. To judge by a US survey, every second middle-market company has digitised about half their payment volumes, writes Treasury Today in a detailed overview.

Quick iron. An industry first, say the participants, about their completed paperless and fully integrated trade of a commodity contract – for iron ore sold by Rio Tinto to a client of Cargill. According to this article by The Global Treasurer, it cuts the complete time to completion down to less than two hours rather than several days.

Trading, virtually. The Marco Polo trade finance network and logistic provider Logwin have executed a real-time trade transaction for the first time, with Commerzbank and LBBW said to have set a new milestone in DLT-based digitalization of commercial transactions. This is reported by news site CTM File, which adds that the details still show much needs to be developed before fully digital cross-border corporate trade on blockchain-based trade platforms is achieved.

Counting billions. State Street celebrates $140 billion in repo investment volumes as a result of its long partnership with the Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC), CTM File notes also. The partnership can be traced back to 2005, but with rule changes in 2017 and 2019 – permitting additional sponsoring and sponsored member client types – FICC’s aggregate cleared repo and reverse repo volumes have risen substantially.

Cheaters will be cheaters. CFOs who cheat on their spouses will be twice as likely to cheat at work. At least if a new academic study, reported on by Bloomberg, is to judge by.