Tausi Insider

Shell has injected nearly $1.5-billion in cash and credit into its British energy retail business this year to help it weather huge volatility in power prices that caused the collapse of several rival U.K. power utilities, Shell Energy said in a filing on Thursday. Britain’s power utilities have been rocked by huge fluctuations in energy prices since the end of 2021 due to a shortage in natural gas supplies, which was exacerbated after Russia sharply reduced supplies to Europe following its invasion of Ukraine in February. The volatility led to several bankruptcies in the sector, including Bulb, which the British government is set to rescue at a cost of up to £6.5-billion ($8-billion). Shell Energy’s SHEL-N operating loss rose to £102.4-million in 2021 from £83.6-million a year earlier, according to the company’s financial results, released on Thursday. The loss was “principally driven by market conditions. In particular, the unprecedented rise in energy prices in the latter part of ...

Almost US$125-billion worth of assets, from performance losses left the hedge fund industry in 2022, Hedge Fund Research (HFR) data showed on Friday in the latest sign of the havoc that volatility wreaked on the industry last year. Investors rethought putting their money into hedge funds, leading to a net outflow of US$55-billion in assets, making it the largest capital flight from the industry since 2016, HFR said. A sharp change from 2021, when the industry saw a positive US$15-billion of net inflows. High inflation, aggressive central bank interest rate-hikes and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine roiled world markets last year, with investors across asset classes having to navigate a level of volatility not seen in years. Investors took US$40.4-billion out of hedge funds that buy and sell stocks, which is also the strategy that posted the worst performance numbers, losing US$112.5-billion. Despite the combined strong performance of funds which trade on macro-economic indicators, instit...

The low-interest-rate era was supported by the disinflationary force of globalization that shifted production to lower-cost parts of the world that, in turn, reduced consumer prices. Those days are now over. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press Craig Alexander has served as chief economist at Deloitte Canada, the Conference Board of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank. The Bank of Canada is struggling to get inflation back under control. Since it adopted inflation targeting in the early 1990s, the central bank has been remarkably successful at keeping inflation within its 1-per-cent to 3-per-cent-target band. Indeed, the average pace of inflation over the decades has been almost bang on the 2-per-cent midpoint target. However, the inflationary pressures from the contraction in global supply during the pandemic and the surge in demand as government restrictions lifted caught the Bank of Canada and many other central banks flat-footed. The current inflation shock shows Canadians just how cr...