GFF Podcast

Analysing global market dynamics in the current geopolitical environment

• Clearstream • Season 4 • Episode 5

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In this special feature episode, we're joined by Olivier d'Assier (Lead Principal, Investment Decision Research, SimCorp) to discuss the reaction of global markets to Donald Trump's re-election, Labour's historic UK budget, and the rapidly changing political landscape in the EU. With co-hosts Andrew Keith Walker, Christian Rossler and James Cherry, we analyse the impact of these changes on inflation, fixed income, money markets, regulation and central bank policy from Asia to the EU and the Fed.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to the GFF podcast and yes, we are here in the studio a little bit later than usual, you may have noticed. For our regular listeners out there, you'll have heard our announcement last week that we couldn't jump the gun on major European events and the impacts they're going to have on markets. So it'll be worth the wait because joining us we have the lead principal for investment decision research at Simcorp, olivier Dacier, joining us to help us look at the future, look at the numbers and look at the impacts on the markets of the major events that have taken place recently. Of course, that's not just the UK labor budget first labor budget in over 14 years but also there's elections on the go in Europe.

Speaker 1:

There's been a lot of turmoil there, of course, quite recently with changes in Germany, and the big news, of course, is Trump is back. Yes, president Trump has been elected as the 47th President of the United States. And how do the markets react. What's this going to mean for investment decisions moving forwards? And, of course, that means what's it going to mean for securities finance and repo. We are going to explore the impact of that with Olivier in a moment, but first of all let me introduce, of course, my co hostshosts for the show. First of all, the most regular co-host, the BFF of GFF, the man without whom there could be no GFF podcast, of course, mr Christian Rossler. Christian, welcome back.

Speaker 2:

Hi Andrew, Hi Olivier, Hi James, Happy to be back.

Speaker 1:

It's good to have you back, christian. And Christian, it's not just you and me hosting the show this week. We have a special guest host joining us Someone you will know, of course, if you've listened to the show in the past Mr James Cherry, head of Business Development for Collateral Liquidity and Lending Solutions, and James couldn't miss out on the opportunity to grill Olivier. James, welcome back.

Speaker 3:

Thanks, Andrew. I don't think I've ever been a host before. I only ever guest.

Speaker 1:

What an honor. It's a bit like a reverse panel event. This because there's three moderators and one panelist and that is, of course, olivier Dacier. Olivier, you will know if you're anything to do with finance, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, where Olivier has been something of a specialist over the years. Before becoming the lead principal investment decision research at Simcorp, he was the head of applied research for Asia Pacific region at Axioma. Of course you'll know another Deutsche Börse family member there, prior to that, president of Japan and Asia Pacific for MSCI Barra. So Olivier has had a view on markets developing for some time now and of course you will know him as well as one of the main authors on the Axioma blog at Simcorp.

Speaker 1:

Don't miss that. It's fantastic there with their proprietary roof. That's risk on, risk off metrics, which underpins some great data journalism. So a man after my own heart there as well. Olivier, welcome to the show. Great to be here, great to have you here. This is a real macro special. So thanks for joining us. I want to kick off with that big picture view. What are the challenges for the EU and for UK market participants in the light of recent events? You know Labour's budget, big leap in borrowing and costs potentially tax rises. The recent US election of course means Trump tariffs again, more borrowing and there's been the breakdown of the German federal government. There's instability in France. There's war in Ukraine. What are the top five issues facing market participants and where are the markets going to go over the next year?

Speaker 4:

Well, so obviously it turns out that the sick man of Europe is actually Europe. We have fiscal problems everywhere. We have weak governments everywhere. The UK was the only one that had a kind of a smooth transition, but that didn't really. The popularity didn't really last very long.

Speaker 4:

Right, the budget is a stair budget. They want to raise taxes and they want to cut back on some of the spending to rein in the fiscal situation there, and that's what others, like France and Germany, will also have to do. So Europe is in a place where its government can't really stimulate growth by themselves. In fact, they should be doing less spending rather than more. So that kind of puts the handcuffs on fiscal stimulus, if you will, for that region, and that's why we have this anemic growth right now in Europe. And then, obviously, you have the geopolitical situation with the US election now, and we know that Donald Trump has tried to bully Europe in the past and he will probably do it again. Meanwhile, china is trying to woo Europe to its side to try to maybe have an ally against the US if Trump starts a trade war too with them. So it's going to be very interesting in the next few months as we learn more about the plan for the new Trump administration.

Speaker 1:

I have a little interesting follow-up there, because you know we haven't talked about Brexit on the show for a very long time, mercifully, I'm sure, for our listeners. But I have to say I read a piece in the newspaper this morning that was saying that Trump because he's in favor of Brexit and he sort of sees the UK in a favorable position relative to Europe that you know he may have a more positive view towards the UK than he does for the rest of Europe. I mean, what's your view on that? Could it be there's finally a benefit coming from Brexit?

Speaker 4:

The US has always been a little closer to the UK than the rest of Europe, to be fair. But Trump has never dealt with a Labour government as well, so that's going to be different. Right, he likes the Tories more. The Conservatives are more aligned with the Republican Party, so we don't know yet how that's going to go. But Trump is also, you know, someone who wants the best deal for America. So to the extent that the UK can help him get that, he will be friendly with them. But if the UK aligns themselves with someone else, then he won't. That's how he is Very unpredictable else than he won, right?

Speaker 1:

that's how he is very impractical and predictable. Okay, well, olivier, at that point I'm going to hand over to the man who's going to be asking the private sector questions. Uh, for the next section. James, over to you thanks, andrew.

Speaker 3:

Well, I guess I mean olivier. We've talked a lot in the first half of 2024 about markets being gripped by uncertainty. Um, you know, you mentioned geopolitical risk. We've got the war in Ukraine, we've got the Middle East, we've got the South China Sea, we've had some unexpected electoral results coming from France, from India, unexpected, of course. This is if you take the view of the pollsters as opposed to the bookies, and I think if anything we've learned recently is actually political pollsters as opposed to the bookies, and I think if anything we've learned recently is actually political pollsters perhaps aren't as good as they purport themselves to be. But my question to you would be really, where do we net out on Trump? Are investors right to remain bullish currently, because I see all this instability in the markets. I actually see that Trump potentially, and the scale of his victory adds the level of stability. So should markets still be bullish?

Speaker 4:

So it's interesting because you know the issues that we were facing that you mentioned at the beginning the war in Ukraine and the Middle East and elsewhere. That you mentioned at the beginning the war in Ukraine, in the Middle East and elsewhere. So geopolitical issues in general do not sway investors because they happen far away, they're usually temporary and the only thing they affect is your asset allocation. So if you think geopolitical risk is too high, then you put more in the safe assets and a little bit less in the risky assets. What they really worried about this year was the economic situation, the economic fundamentals, right. When will inflation come down? When will central banks start cutting interest rates and how much is that going to cost us in terms of economic growth? But people have been predicting recession all of last year and for this year as well, and it never happened. It turned out we beat inflation, interest rates are coming down now and it didn't cost us anything on the economy, right? So I think the market is now playing that back a little bit.

Speaker 4:

The US elections the first thing you know from US election is you now have a business-friendly president and a business-friendly Congress, because the Republicans have also taken over the Senate and I think they're expected to have a majority in the House as well. So you have a business-friendly government now in the US and they're expecting that that's going to be bullish for stocks. So we're seeing that rally now short term. But the other thing that we know from having experienced the Trump presidency before and back then he lost the majority in Congress, so he was somewhat hampered by that. But right now he has a mandate to affect everything from tax policies, monetary policies, industrial policies and the way the government operates.

Speaker 4:

So people are expecting big changes, which means that they're going to have a much shorter investment horizon now with him, because it's useless to try to predict what's going to happen six months or a year down the road because you don't know what he's going to do in two months or three months. So it's going to bring the time horizon of most people's investment or risk appetite to a very short-term point of view for the next three, six months at least, because we won't know much until he takes over and we start to see what happens. So that's a big difference from prior kind of presidency changes. We could always forecast what Harris was going to do. We could forecast what Biden was going to do. You cannot forecast. In fact, the best way for you to lose money is to pretend you know how Trump is going to go on any one issue.

Speaker 3:

There may be an exception to that when we think about inflation, though, because everything that you're talking about there Trump's view on corporate tax, pro-business science, these are inflationary right, so surely there's at least a sort of medium-term view that inflation and the progress we've made on inflation in recent years is perhaps going to be reversed to an extent. Is that a fair statement or not?

Speaker 4:

So that's a fair statement of, I think, the consensus going into this election that his policies will cut fiscal revenue for the government and tariffs could increase consumer prices. But tariffs for him it's a tool to get someone to the table to negotiate. It's not something he plans on putting on and leaving there forever. The Biden administration left the Trump terrorism forever because they didn't really engage or negotiate with China. Trump plans to essentially triple them in size to get China and other trading partners to the table right, which means he intends to use them as a tool and they may be temporary and in this case the inflationary impact would be temporary as well.

Speaker 3:

The other thing I sort of perhaps worry about to an extent is the idea of the neutrality of the Fed. So you know there were comments from Powell. Maybe there was a little bit of a misunderstanding on what the president can and can't do and Powell clarified that. But you also see, gary Gensler from the SEC has now stepped down. Is there a credible chance that we will see less neutrality from, or less independence from, the Fed and the SEC under a Trump regime and with Trumponomics?

Speaker 4:

I think the Fed and the SEC are two separate kind of institutions. I think the market sees the Fed's independence as sacrosanct and what we've seen from this Trump campaign is that it was much more professionally run than the first one. So we have to think that the advisors who are advising him this time around will make sure that the Fed's independence is not put into question by markets. The markets don't really like the SEC, so they don't care what he does with it, and I think that's why you're seeing these changes. So that's probably what's going to happen. The Powell is in until 2026. It's only another year plus, so there's no point in trying to force him out. From Trump's point of view, he's been very successful. He's getting an A grade on fighting inflation and bringing it down and not crashing the economy, so there's no reason not to let it be for now.

Speaker 3:

One of the US bookmakers. I forget the name of them now, but they're offering something like a 75% chance for Elon Musk to have a role in Trump's cabinet, if you like these type of characters. Presumably they're going to have a pretty profound impact on the regulatory landscape and the view that this administration takes towards financial markets regulation. Do you have a view on that?

Speaker 4:

So, again, I would say that if someone like Elon Musk makes it to Cabinet post which is unlikely, but he'll still be an advisor for sure, again, the market will see that here's a pro-business person who knows what it is to run a business and therefore he will make sure that the administration, the bureaucrats, have policies that are aligned with, that are good for business, not bad for business, obviously. So I think markets will not be too deterred by that kind of choice. There were talks yeah, there were talks of Jamie Dimon for a while. There were talks of, of course, the Goldman Sachs partner who made so much money betting against the housing market during the global financial crisis. So people like that are definitely in the wings, but I'm not sure if they will get cabinet posts. What will be very interesting, and I think what markets are waiting for, is who is he going to choose to deal with trade? So is he bringing Lighthizer back, for example? Who is a China hawk, so that we know from the Chinese point of view that this is going to go bad? They want to know that, right. Who are going to be the ones that Trump is going to use to kind of either bully Europe or Japan or China.

Speaker 4:

Trump has made no secret that he would like to see a weaker dollar. He thinks the dollar is too strong. He would like all trading partners, especially Japan and China, to revalue their currency. So he's going to put a lot of pressure on those markets or those currencies. China can resist, but Japan maybe less. So I mean he's hoping he was hoping that, you know, as the Fed cuts back interest rates that the dollar would weaken on its own.

Speaker 4:

But as we've seen from the bond market, right 10-year bond yields went back from 370 back to 440 because they think if he wins it's going to be inflationary. So the market is fighting him a little bit on that. You also have the fact that the US equity is now about 70 plus percent of a global equity index. It used to be less than 60 percent before the pandemic. It's now 70 percent. So people have to buy more dollars to hold more US stocks just to keep up with the global index. So the demand for a dollar is also, you know, kind of an indication of America's success. It's the strongest economy in the world right now. It's got the best earnings of all listed markets. It's got the best AI story and everybody wants a piece of that. So demand for dollars might remain stronger than you would like for a while because of its success.

Speaker 1:

Here at the GFF podcast, we're kind of uniquely placed, aren't we? Between the private sector and, of course, the public sector, because it's all about the plumbing, the collateral management, the central bank, monetary policy and how that affects private markets. So, christian, it's time for us to swap from our private view to our public view and hand over to you as our central bank expert.

Speaker 2:

Yes, thank you, andrew. Well, at the conference of the ECB last week, and there were representatives from the major central banks in the world. So the Bank of England was there, the Fed was there, the Bank of Japan and, interestingly, what was discussed is not only monetary policy. And I want maybe to make the link to what you just said about the US dollar. I mean, the US dollar is still, in the wholesale market, the currency that is most used in the world, so 80% of the payments are in US dollar and, interestingly, it puts the banks in the Eurozone to an unlevel playing field with global, systemically important banks in the US. The big US banks are net lenders of dollars and the European banks are somehow they're constrained by regulation.

Speaker 2:

And regulation is one of the things I would like to ask you, oliver, because we all know that Trump is a regulation septic, so he doesn't like it, and not only you know what means climate. But in general and I think he has a point there and I think this is something I would like your opinion how to view Trump. I mean, is it really important to take him seriously, yes or no? So that's the first question. Second, I think that, coming back to repo markets and also to regulation.

Speaker 2:

There's a link which, in the monetary policy, when banks go to the central bank and they borrow money, but, on the other hand, they are constrained by regulation to keep high-quality liquid assets on their balance sheet and in Europe, they found out that many banks are actually substituting they go to the central bank, they borrow money and they actually post collateral as well, so but they substitute good quality collateral against low quality collateral. So they actually do a lot of things in europe because they are driven by regulation and not really because they're driven by business. And so that's the second point I wanted to make, and, yes, I think that we are in for another term with Trump, and so I would like to have your view on those points.

Speaker 4:

The discussion on banks, a little bit on central banks in particular. It was very interesting that in the last few years we had this very correlated effort by major central banks all raising at the same times, now cutting at the same time, with the exception of the Bank of Japan who's gone against the grain, so to speak, on both times right. So that's a little bit of an unprecedented type of environment for markets. The second thing I'd say yes, trump is anti-regregulation and he is going to we understand bring in actual bankers, people. He listens to people like jimmy diamond and others about how to maybe reform the, the banking regulation in america and obviously the market is is in favor of that because banks have been rising quite, quite since he won the election. He's seen it's been good for big banks. He's going to make it simpler for them to do business. He's going to change the way the SEC works and probably the banking regulations work as well. So he's going to have an impact on the banking system in the US.

Speaker 4:

He was very vocal about not liking the way the rescue was done last year during the banking system in the US. He was very vocal about not liking the rescue the way the rescue was done last year during the banking crisis in March. So he has a plan to change all that and right now what we see from the market reaction is that they like his ideas. They like the regulation in the banking sector in the US. What does it mean for European banks? I mean it'll probably mean that the disadvantage gets bigger, not smaller. It probably means that if Europe does not change their regulations to match, then there will be an increasing disadvantage for European banks.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it's a fact that different regulations, different jurisdictions, you know that goes without saying. But I think that for Europe, we see that you know we are from a perspective of banks. We are at an unlevel playing field here, clearly.

Speaker 4:

And it's a problem. For it's also a problem because if you look at the equity markets, europe versus US, there are some very big differences. In Europe, the banks or the financials and industrials are the bulk of the market, and these are two areas where there's overregulation by the EU. There's a lot of disadvantages and there's a lot of pain. You look at the US market and the biggest bid is tech right, that's 30%. You look at the US market and the biggest bid is tech right, that's 30%. Banks are also a large part, but technology consumer discretionary communication services that's developed right, that's right there. The ballgame right now for the US market, and that's an area where there's light regulation, or at least there hasn't been too much regulation yet, and that's allowed the US market to outperform Europe for the last three years. Right.

Speaker 2:

One final question I have is on climate. I mean, andrew and I we've been hosting a lot of shows on ESG and we knew that things were going to go and change with regards to not only because of Trump, but, I think, in general. I mean, it's very difficult for institutions to follow all these standards, but now that Trump is back in the seat, do you believe that all these agreements will be void in the future or do you think he changes because he thinks that needs to kind of? Also, as you said earlier, he has prepared his second campaign much better than the first one, so you think he has a different view now.

Speaker 4:

I think his view is is simply changed in terms of timing, right? So what he's saying is you have all these accords, you have all these things that you come up with and these targets you come up with, and you're going to miss all of them. So this doesn't work, right. So it's pointless to stay in one of these, in these like the Paris Accord or the Paris Agreement, because you're not going to meet those targets. You're not investing to make these targets, you're just buying more stuff from China. So he doesn't like it.

Speaker 4:

He is going to, as you said, drill, drill, drill from day one. So we can see already in the market, all of the energy-type stocks are going gangbusters and meanwhile, all of the green energy stocks, solar panels and windmill stocks and all that are collapsing, right, so we know he's going to affect that part of it. But his point is look, we have oil right now. We need oil right now to get a strong economy to fund research and development for a solution to climate change. Right, he does talk about climate change like it's a hoax and all that.

Speaker 4:

But the thing about Trump is, you've got to take him seriously, but not literally, right?

Speaker 4:

Uh? And what he's going to do is. What he's hoping to do is look, let me give a free reign to these tech guys on ai, because if we're going to find a solution to climate change, it's going to have to be with new technology, it's going to have to be with innovation and things like that, not from simply drilling less or or to a cleaner type of coal that doesn't do anything, that doesn't move the needle. He wants to be seen as moving the needle, so he's going to pull out of any kind of a corridor organization that kind of puts the brakes on him doing that and he's going to go with his own plan. And by the type of people who he's surrounding himself with, like Elon Musk and others, you can tell that he's getting plenty of advice from the kind of Silicon Valley type circles about okay, this is how we could impact climate change, this is how we could solve this problem, but we need to be going this way and not that way.

Speaker 1:

Sadly, our new shorter, sharper, crisper format means that we have to start tying our things together. We're going to go a few minutes over our usual 30-minute runtime though, because it would be a shame to waste Olivier like that. So I also have to ask the crystal ball question. James, I'm going to start with you, because you are very much connected to that core of clearstream strategy product development strategy moving forwards, what is going to be a change, if any, now that we're seeing a slightly new political landscape globally in the sort of core areas where Clearstream operates?

Speaker 3:

So change? I think from a collateral lending and liquidity perspective. I think from a collateral lending and liquidity perspective, these are things that remain mission critical for pretty much anyone engaged in financial markets. They have been for a long time and they will remain so, even more so now with persistent volatility, geopolitical macro uncertainty. So really core to what we offer to our clients and to capital markets is safety, security and trust.

Speaker 3:

We often describe ourselves as the plumbers of financial markets and in an increasingly polarized, fragmenting, increasingly polarized, fragmenting or fragmented world, I think there is a real role for the plumbers, um and and for trust. So for us, you know we see a critical role in in facilitating access to broad, diversified, stable liquidity. Um, that's super important and absolutely core to what we're offering our clients. And then again, there's a's a timeliness element to this as well. We need to keep building and enhancing our product offering in terms of reporting and risk mitigation tools to help our clients guard against the sort of stuff that we see in the modern age. So we've seen the LDI crisis, we've seen Silicon Valley and the US regional banks, we've seen the volatility in energy markets following the invasion of Russia and Ukraine, and all of this has a very real world impact on collateral markets, your margin requirements. So enhancing reporting risk mitigation tools and facilitating that access to liquid markets is absolutely core to what we will continue to keep doing safety, security and trust.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, James, that's good. And Christian, I'm going to come to you because you're just back from Frankfurt, from the Money Markets Conference. There, You're really at the heart of the EU, right there at a time when. There You're really at the heart of the EU, right there at a time when, let's face it, it's all kicking off a little bit in Germany as well. So I want to ask you what impact do you think Trump 2.0, shall we call him is going to have? Because political shifts in the EU will mean you're going to have to focus on your central bank tools settling across the European collateral markets. So what do you think is going to be the change there on the central bank side for the plumbers?

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, as I said, I might just summarize a little bit and then leave it also to Olivier to comment on that. First of all, I repeat myself I think that non-US banks and Eurozone banks will continue to hunt for dollars, which is one of the trends that came out of that conference. The other trend is that and I think Olivier has already mentioned that central banks he spoke about the Fed, but major central banks in the world have achieved during QE what was to be done, but now we are going into QT and QE was an extraordinary measure, so banks are deleveraging their balance sheets. Central banks, so we are in a period where they try to find the right approach to steer pricing stability, which I think is different jurisdictions, different toolboxes, but I mean more or less they use our tools to do that lower quality collateral and higher quality collateral with lower quality collateral when they go to the central bank, and then they post the higher quality collateral on the balance sheet for hqla and for liquid decoverage ratios. This is going to continue as long as regulations are what they are.

Speaker 2:

And I think, concerning us dollar and euro, you know that there's two ways actually for banks to get access to dollars if they have Euro, either they go into repo market and they borrow US dollars with collateral or they go into the Forex market and they swap Euros against US dollars. And the fact is that European banks have to report at quarter end to the regulator and you can see spikes at quarter end where banks move out of repos into Forex. So they pay more money to buy the dollar at the quarter end because it actually has no impact on the balance sheet. Repos, for those that borrow, the dollars have an impact on the balance sheet, whereas the Forex is off balance sheet, but they pay premium there. And all of this, I think, is to the most extent driven by regulation. So my big question to Olivier is you know how is regulation going to look like going forward in the next two years?

Speaker 1:

Well, in fact, on that front, christian, I'm going to scoop you there and say thanks for that question. Christian, I'm going to use that one myself and say, Olivier, obviously I've been reading your blog. It's a great blog, by the way. Do check it out, the Axioma blog at SimCorp. Just do a little search for Olivier Dacier Axioma, and you will find a wealth of information there. So, olivier, I'm going to hit you up. You've talked about this shift from faster, cheaper. That's characterized, uh, the banking industry, uh, for the whole sort of qe era, I suppose, moving out of qe um, and you're saying we're moving from faster, better, cheaper to safer, clearer, shorter. That's what market participants need.

Speaker 4:

Tell us more about that and what that means for 2025 so we've seen that, uh, as james and christian alluded to earlier, these geopolitical events like the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East and all that that have come and had a bigger impact than geopolitical events have had in the past. Right, and most of that is due to the fact that the US and China both abdicated their kind of global leadership roles right leadership roles. Right. Now we have Trump as president and he says he can end the war in Ukraine in a single day. He hasn't said how, but he says he can end it there. He says. I think the oil market is also convinced that the war in the Middle East can be ended at any time at Israel's choosing. They have shown that they cannot be beaten, so they will end it when they want to. Otherwise, oil wouldn't be at $70 a barrel, it would be at $90 plus a barrel. So that leaves really for next year and the year after the US-China relationship and whether or not the largest and second largest economy in the world can start working together to increase the pie for the rest of us. Or will they try to take Europe apart and force Europe to choose sides, take sides and things like that, and that will affect how investors react and how they plan, especially long-term investors like pension funds.

Speaker 4:

We know that Trump is unpredictable, so that brings the short-term horizon very much in focus for people. Until he said this is what he will do, nobody wants to really make a bet that he will do A or B. They want to hear it from him. Same with China. They don't want to hear it from Xi.

Speaker 4:

We've had plenty of officials in China talk about a stimulus package for the last two months and expectations were high, but we haven't heard anything from Xi yet about what he plans to do. So there's a little bit of disappointment now. So both of these countries have to come to terms with each other. They have to cooperate for the rest of us to be kind of safe and growing, and we don't know if that's going to happen yet. So I think that's the biggest question mark for markets and investors for 2025 and possibly beyond. As far as regulations are concerned, we see in Europe because of the political situation right now and the rise of the far right in the last couple of elections we've seen there, including the EU election, that regulators are having to kind of pare back some of those regulations.

Speaker 4:

First they pared some back because of the farmer revolts last year. Now they're paring back because of the immigration revolts from the far right and the populist movement that's driving that. So with Trump as US president, the populist movement in Europe will only gain more strength. So I think you can expect that the regulators, both domestically and EU regulators themselves, will be under tremendous pressure to justify any kind of regulation that is already existing and certainly would be very artful to add new regulations. So we may be entering an era of slow deregulation in Europe and that would be something that would be welcomed by investors, welcomed by markets. But overriding all this is the US-China relationship and what happens to global trade and the growth of the global economy, and that's still going to be number one.

Speaker 1:

On that note, I'm afraid we have to draw things to a close there, so I guess all that remains is for us to give a huge GFF thank you to today's star performer, superstar DJ of the investment decision making world, our lead principal at Simcor for investment decision making, olivier Dacier.

Speaker 4:

Olivier, thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

But, of course, no show would be complete without my co-host here in the studio, and that is, of course, in no particular order. Our guest co-host for the day. Head of business development for Collateral Liquidity and Lending Solutions. Regular guest of the show. You'll know him james cherry. James, thanks for joining us today, thanks a lot. And, of course, uh, my regular co-host, the bff of a gff, and if only you could see him in the studio today. Do make sure you check out our uh promo video that goes out uh our LinkedIn channel as well, so you can see Christian, who is wearing a very, very smart jacket today. I'm in the market for a new jacket. I always look at Christian's jackets first. I'm sorry I've said it now. It's on air. It's true, he's a very stylish man. A huge thank you to Mr Christian Rossler, always a pleasure.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, Andrew.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and for lovers of news about global funding and financing markets and, of course, peak lapels, join us on our LinkedIn page that is linkedincom slash company, slash Clearstream, where you can find out all about this week's show, our previous guests. You can network with James and with Christian and with Olivier and also with me and join us on the next show. And in the meantime, from everyone here in the virtual studio, bye-bye and remember. This podcast is brought to you by Clearstream Banking, one of the main sponsors of the GFF Summit every year in Luxembourg, and features members of the Clearstream team and special guests expressing their personal opinions, not the opinions of Clearstream as an organization. There's no representation made as to the accuracy or completeness of information in this podcast, nor should it be taken as legal, tax or other professional advice. See you next month.