Aurelia Butler

The writer is co-founder and chief investment strategist at Absolute Strategy ResearchThere’s an old investment saying that bull markets last longer than you think possible and bear markets hit harder than you can imagine. This is one reason why investors should be positive most of the time. However, once every eight to 10 years it pays to be cautious. The recent spate of bank failures suggests that now is one such moment.Policymakers want to present these bank failures as idiosyncratic and unlikely to trigger a broader systemic crisis. We are unconvinced. First, we have a different view of the nature of systemic risk. And second, a decade of low rates and easy money has distorted capital allocations in ways that increase the risk of systemic crisis.Successive financial crises have shown that systemic risk is multiplicative. The failure of a small entity can have severe consequences for the whole system. Faultlines tend to show up in the weakest links in systems, not necessarily the largest. Despite this, policymakers continue to obsess about the larger institutions as systemically important, only to be blindsided by smaller players that are less well-capitalised and less tightly regulated.The recent spate of US bank failures is also a symptom of what we call quantitative destruction: the systematic unwinding of the institutional structures that emerged and thrived in a decade of near-zero rates and easy liquidity. The largest, fastest and broadest tightening of policy rates seen in 40 years, combined with central bank balance sheet reduction, is challenging parts of the financial system. Many models for business operations, funding and default have not been road-tested adequately for such a sudden shift. We saw this last year when crypto and the strategies of UK pension funds came under pressure.And if 2022 was about the repricing of capital, 2023 is likely to be about the reduction in the quantity of capital, as “quantitative destruction” puts alternative assets and non-bank financial institutions to the test after their recent rapid growth.

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A decade of zero rates triggered a search for yield which led to pension fund portfolio allocations to commercial real estate and alternatives rising from 15 per cent in 2007 to 23 per cent by 2022, according to Willis Towers Watson’s Thinking Ahead Institute. Real estate could be one key flashpoint in 2023. Residential property prices have already been hit hard by higher rates, and now commercial property prices are also falling. Eventually, asset owners and lenders will need to reprice their property assets. With about 60 per cent of $2.9tn US commercial real estate loans funded by smaller banks, stress looks set to rise.Private debt and equity also gained from their higher yields and lower reported volatility (since their valuations are often not marked to market). When liquidity was plentiful, private companies could easily access debt and equity markets. This becomes harder as rates rise and liquidity evaporates. Asset owners may have to make good their commitments to invest in funds when called on. To do this, they may need to sell publicly listed assets, liquidating what they can sell, rather than what they want to (as happened in the UK pension fund crisis over so-called liability driven investment strategies). A recent New York Federal Reserve Board paper highlighted how these kind of asset fire sales by non-bank financial institutions — which now account for $60tn of global assets — could inject systemic risk back into the banking system.Increased financial risks are also a symptom of broader debt deleveraging. Between 2008 and 2021, the expansion of central bank balance sheets led to a sharp rise in borrowing. Global non-financial debt rose in that period from 182 per cent to 257 per cent of gross domestic product.

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As central banks shifted to quantitative tightening, that non-financial debt has fallen back to 238 per cent of GDP (with US non-financial debt consistently falling as a percentage of GDP for the first time since the early 1950s). While central bankers may see balance-sheet reduction largely as a technical process, the financial sector is experiencing it as classic debt deleveraging.At the start of every systemic crisis, financial failures tend to be labelled as idiosyncratic. As the pace and scale of financial failure spreads, that narrative becomes harder to maintain. A decade of zero rates and easy liquidity have provided the preconditions for systemic crisis, with rapid asset growth and financial innovation encouraging new entrants into lightly regulated areas. We believe that “quantitative destruction”, fuelled by a toxic mix of rising rates, debt deleveraging and elevated equity valuations, has the potential to turn those financial risks from idiosyncratic to systemic.   More

The settlement of Uis in a remote part of Namibia seems an unlikely hotspot for a mineral cold war over the future of electric vehicles.Uis lies in the arid hills of Erongo, a large and sparsely populated province of the south-west African country. For decades the only signs of its mineral wealth were the gemstones sold to tourists by artisanal miners, who scrabbled a living in the shadow of a disused tin mine.But soon the site of that mine will be part of a global race for lithium, the alkali metal that is a key raw material for automotive batteries. Securing reliable lithium supply is one of the biggest challenges facing carmakers striving to produce more electric vehicles. A pilot plant being built by Andrada, a London-listed miner, should produce its first batch of concentrated lithium by the end of June, using ore mined from the resurrected and expanded tin operation.The facility will conveniently lie less than 300km from Walvis Bay, a major regional port. Anthony Viljoen, Andrada’s chief executive, believes the region will be “globally significant” not just for lithium but other metals critical to the energy transition, such as tin and tantalum.

But it has competition. Last month, Africa’s first Chinese-owned lithium concentrate plant started up trial production at Arcadia, in Zimbabwe. That mine was bought by Huayou Cobalt in 2021 for $422mn, part of a recent billion-dollar wave of Chinese lithium deals in a country where many western investors fear to tread.“The first wave of Chinese investments has taken place and that has led to a rude awakening for western companies,” Viljoen tells the Financial Times after a tour of the site of Andrada’s plant.More than just lithium is at stake. From Brussels to London to Washington, concern over access to critical minerals is at an all-time high after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amid escalating tensions between the west and China. The People’s Republic has built a dominant position in many of the minerals that are crucial for the energy transition, including cobalt, lithium and rare earth metals. The west is preparing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to try to catch up.One recent visitor to Uis was Thierry Breton, the EU internal markets commissioner in charge of the bloc’s strategy for ensuring supplies of critical minerals. He praised the mine as “one of the potential largest lithium hardrock mine[s] in the world” on Twitter. Amos Hochstein, Joe Biden’s energy security envoy, has also been touring Africa and says the US plans to start enacting a strategy to invest in the continent’s minerals. “We have to have the mining in the hands of multiple countries, companies, and there needs to be competition,” he says.

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But across the continent, it is clear who has already stolen a march. “It’s not so much fear of the Chinese getting there first. They are there first. It’s already happened,” says Russell Fryer, executive director of Critical Metals, a London-listed investor in African mines.After Zimbabwe, Namibia is the next country in Chinese investors’ sights. Last month Huayou Cobalt also gained a foothold in Erongo with a small but symbolic investment in Askari, an Australian firm exploring in Uis. Xinfeng, a Chinese exploration company active in Erongo, has mined tens of thousands of tonnes of raw lithium ore and shipped it to China.The battery boomKnown as “white gold”, lithium is the lightest solid element in the periodic table. Its high electrochemical potential makes it critical to electric vehicle batteries. It is produced from the brines of Latin America or hard-rock ore bodies in Australia — the leading producer — and other parts of the world, including Africa and China itself.Lithium is abundant across the Earth, meaning that there should be enough to go around if money is pumped into the right projects. The challenge is timing: the rapid uptake of electric vehicles is expected to drive a near fivefold increase in lithium demand by 2030.The EU and a growing number of US states such as California and New York want to stop selling petrol and diesel cars by 2035, a deadline that leaves little lead time to discover good lithium deposits and develop them to consistent production. Fearful of deeper shortages later this decade, carmakers such as General Motors have even invested in mines.If Africa can rapidly bring lithium projects online this decade, it will go a long way to fixing a bottleneck in the energy transition. Commodity trading giant Trafigura predicts Africa could supply a fifth of the world’s lithium in 2030 while Susan Zou, an analyst at Rystad Energy, says the continent “could be a rising star for lithium minerals”.“If you look at the development of mines in Africa, they are quick.” In particular, she says, Huayou Cobalt’s development of Arcadia in Zimbabwe was “outside of people’s expectations”.An old open-cast tin mining pit in Uis, Namibia, part of the portfolio of the London-listed Andrada. The miner is having to show it can achieve high tin throughput before it moves on to lithium © Joseph Cotterill/FTOne person familiar with that project says equipment was ordered before the deal was even signed and construction was nonstop, adding that Chinese financiers are far more likely to take big risks than western development and commercial banks.Junior African miners face an uphill battle in capital markets. Andrada’s market capitalisation is less than £100mn and it is having to concentrate on demonstrating that it can achieve high tin throughput and keep costs down before it moves on to lithium.While US and European officials have been promoting African partnerships and compiling lists of critical minerals, Chinese investors have been not only buying up African mines to produce these minerals but building refineries at home to process their output.China is way out in front when it comes to converting the metal to raw materials for batteries; the International Energy Agency puts its share of global refining capacity at 58 per cent. Until similar facilities are operational in Europe, the US, or Africa itself, China will be the main customer for Africa’s lithium.“It’s apparent [that] Africa is closer to Europe and shipping the product to somewhere in Europe would make economic sense, but China has already put a lot of infrastructure in place,” says Bernard Aylward, chief executive of Kodal Minerals, a London-listed lithium developer active in Mali, which this year received more than $110mn in funding from Fosun subsidiary Hainan Mining.

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Chinese companies invested in lithium supply in Africa and Latin America even when lithium prices were low. As Australia builds domestic processing plants for its own mineral riches and after the Canadian government ordered Chinese investors to divest from certain Canadian mining companies, China is doubling down on those developing regions.“We have to be fair to the Chinese,” says Hadley Natus, chair of Tantalex, a group exploring for lithium in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “They put money in long before anyone else did.”The charm offensiveFaced with China’s dominance of the lithium supply chain, western officials are pitching their investment offer to African countries as a more socially responsible alternative. African counterparties “see us as a fair arbiter, as someone that can help with greater transparency,” says Nusrat Ghani, the UK minister responsible for critical minerals. But that only goes so far when confronted with challenges on the ground, which range from lack of transport infrastructure to corruption and capricious politics. At Manono in the DRC, an old tin mining area like Uis that could be Africa’s biggest untapped lithium deposit, Australia’s AVZ Minerals is locked in a legal battle with China’s state-backed Zijin Mining over the ownership structure of the concession. Its shares have been suspended since last May as a result. Marius Mihigo, a Congolese businessman who acts as a middleman for AVZ in Africa, says that Zijin was behind an “orchestrated misinformation campaign” against the Australian firm, after a proposal to pay him a $5mn success bonus if it secured an exploitation licence was leaked to the media. Speaking from a hotel in London, Mihigo says he only accepted $1mn as an upfront payment and the success fee was scrapped in the final contract. Zijin rejects his claims, calling them “biased and misleading”.A digger at work on the road at Arcadia’s mine in Zimbabwe last year. The landlocked country’s lithium would need to cross a border to even begin to access the global market © Tafadzwa Ufumeli/Getty ImagesIn March, Atlantic Lithium, the London-listed developer of a Ghanaian mine to supply the US, was accused by a short seller of bribing government officials to secure licences. It denies the claims, which it says are “false and misleading”.Zimbabwe’s lithium boom also comes with the unpredictable politics of the Zanu-PF government. In December, the country banned exports of raw lithium ore to stifle informal mining and favour local processing, but the decision could increase project costs.Even if it ends up partly processed at home, landlocked Zimbabwe’s lithium would still need to cross a border to get to the global market. Many other African lithium projects are far from ports; Andrada’s mine is a rare exception but Uis still lacks a tarred road.Lithium metal from Manono will require a 630km road just to get to the Zambian border, where queues as long as 70 kilometres have held up trucks laden with copper and cobalt. An upgrade to the route has been mired in a dispute between the government and a Chinese contractor.“Governments need to start working on cross-country logistics and infrastructure if we really want to open up Africa,” Tantalex’s Natus says. But it is slow going. US presidential adviser Hochstein cited working for 12 months to secure western operators for the Lobito Corridor, one section of a railway that stretches across the continent from Angola’s Atlantic coastline through DRC’s mineral-rich Katanga region and the Zambian copper belt to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.Conveyor belts move ore at Andrada’s Uis tin mining operation in Namibia. The miner’s tin investment has brought jobs to the area, along with cash in the ATMs and dairy products in the shops © Joseph Cotterill/FT“We’re using critical minerals to incentivise the financing of the rail and port,” Hochstein says. “Once you do that, you can extend that rail to build agribusiness and other kinds of business that wouldn’t go into these countries if there wasn’t a way to get equipment in and out.”African governments would always prefer value to be added to their country’s mineral wealth at home, rather than exported abroad for others to get the benefit. Tom Alweendo, Namibia’s mining minister, has said his country may follow Zimbabwe in banning exports of raw ore.But a full-scale lithium hydroxide plant needs power, chemicals and raw lithium for processing. For now, few locations on the continent can provide all these things.“The quicker the west comes to terms with the fact that this is a business environment, then the quicker they’re going to find they have the opportunity to get a very significant foothold,” says George Roach, chief executive of Premier African Minerals, a lithium developer in Zimbabwe that has committed half of its supply to China.A race against timeBack in Uis, Andrada’s tin investment has brought jobs, mobile phone reception, cash in the ATMs and dairy products in the local grocery store. Lithium mining could bring much more; the company wants to find a partner that can build a full-scale plant in Namibia to transform the metal beyond concentrate to battery-grade lithium chemicals.“Nine months ago, it would have been clear cut — we’d sell [ore] to China. But if you’re talking about a long-term strategic partner, you have various options,” Viljoen says.Colles Hoaeb, a gemstone miner in Uis, displays crystals from the area. He says western miners pay well and offer stability, whereas their Chinese rivals hire quicker to get the resources sooner © Joseph Cotterill/FTBut the history of Uis is also a reminder that mining is hard and that international politics and commodity markets are fickle. The old Uis pit closed in 1990 after Namibia gained independence from South Africa and the collapse of the international tin agreement led to prices tumbling. Colles Hoaeb, a local gemstone miner, hopes that he is indeed living in a future African boom town. “It’s a good thing that the mine has come back,” he says. Western miners pay well and offer long-term stability, but Chinese rivals hire quicker to get the resources sooner, Hoaeb says. “They are doing small mining — take 50 guys, do the mining and finish the job very fast.”Critical Metals’ Fryer says there is no shortage of lithium buyers but few want to run a mine. “They [the buyers] want someone else to do the hard work. They literally don’t get their hands dirty.”There are other reasons for investors to hedge their bets. Lithium is volatile; prices for lithium hydroxide soared throughout 2022 and peaked at $80,000 a tonne in December, but have since dropped to $55,000. Although that is still almost four times the long-term average of about $15,000, the dip has led some western miners to come under pressure from investors to moderate their investment plans — even as Chinese firms push ahead.

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Some also believe the ultimate answer to potential shortages of lithium will not be digging more of it out of the African rock, but developing substitutes such as sodium-ion batteries in laboratories.“The amount of intellectual capital and brainpower that is looking to find substitutes to lithium-ion batteries is pretty remarkable,” Fryer says.To limit this substitution risk, some investors prefer to fund projects that can produce multiple metals, or ones with multiple uses. Copper is one such metal; it is being substituted for aluminium in some areas but it is still used in everything from electric cables to plumbing — and African copper deposits often yield valuable cobalt as a byproduct.African miners pivoting to lithium expect it to be used in electric cars for years or even decades to come, saying that it would take time for a new battery technology to be widely adopted and for supply chains to adapt. In the meantime, they are in a race to develop new deposits not just with Chinese-owned rivals but also rivals in more established jurisdictions such as Australia and Canada.“We’ve got to show as quickly as possible that we can get our product to market quicker than them,” Viljoen says. “As with all gold rushes, the first gold is the best gold.” More

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s business sentiment soured in January-March to hit the worst level in more than two years, a closely-watched central bank survey showed on Monday, as slowing global growth clouds the outlook for the export-reliant economy.The service-sector mood, by contrast, recovered as easing border controls and an end to COVID-19 curbs heightened hopes for a rebound in tourism and consumption, the Bank of Japan’s tankan survey showed.The survey will be among key data the central bank will scrutinise in producing fresh quarterly growth and inflation estimates at its next meeting on April 27-28 – the first one to be chaired by incoming Governor Kazuo Ueda.The headline index measuring big manufacturers’ sentiment fell to plus 1 in March from plus 7 in December, Bank of Japan (BOJ) data showed, worse than a median market forecast for a reading of plus 3. It was the fifth straight quarter of deterioration and the worst level hit since December 2020.Sentiment soured for a broad sector of manufacturers with many firms complaining of the impact of rising raw material and fuel costs, as well as slowing overseas growth and slumping chip demand, a BOJ official told a briefing.Big non-manufacturers’ index rose for a fourth quarter to plus 20 from plus 19 in December, matching a median market forecast, the survey showed, as hopes of a rebound in tourism and service demand brightened morale among retailers and hotels.Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute, expects external factors, such as the fallout from U.S. and European monetary tightening, to weigh on Japan’s exports and business sentiment.”Given the fragile nature of Japan’s recovery, the BOJ is not in a situation where it can normalise monetary policy anytime soon,” he said.Big firms plan to raise capital expenditure by 3.2% in the fiscal year that began in April, less than market forecasts for a 4.9% gain, the tankan showed.Companies expect inflation to hit 2.8% a year from now, 2.3% three years from now and 2.1% five years from now, the survey showed in a sign firms are bracing for inflation to remain above the central bank’s 2% target for years to come.Japan’s economy narrowly averted a recession in the final three months of 2022 and analysts expect any rebound in the January-March quarter to have been modest, as slow wage growth and rising living costs hurt consumption.Many big firms promised hefty pay rises in spring wage talks with unions, offering policymakers hope that consumption will recover and take up the slack from an expected slump in exports.The strength of the economy, as well as wage and inflation outlook, will be key to how soon the BOJ could tweak or end its bond yield control policy that has been criticised as distorting market pricing and hurting financial institutions’ margin. More

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Chicago’s CME Group opened options trading for Chinese yuan futures on Monday, as it looks to deepen a market that investors use for betting or hedging against moves in China’s currency.Hong Kong has offered similar exchange-traded options since 2017, though bringing the product to CME – the world’s biggest derivatives exchange – may be a step toward competing with the banks that dominate options by selling directly to customers.”Many traders no longer view CNH as an emerging market currency like it was ten years ago,” said Chris Povey, CME Group’s (NASDAQ:CME) executive director of FX products based in London, referring to the ticker symbol for the offshore-traded Chinese yuan.Povey said customers from investment institutions to small time traders were interested in exchange-traded yuan products.A futures contract is a financial contract where parties agree to a transaction at a fixed price in the future. An option affords its buyer the opportunity to buy or sell an underlying asset, in this case a futures contract, at a fixed price in the future.Exchange-traded options offer a way to bet on the yuan’s direction without dealing directly with banks, which write options and sell them over-the-counter to customers in far larger volumes than those settled on global exchanges.”We hope to see liquidity develop there that’s comparable to the over-the-counter market,” said Tim Brooks, London-based head of FX options at Optiver, which will deal in the new CME derivatives.The CME options have a range of expiry dates from weekly, to monthly or a year and are based on futures contracts with a notional amount of $100,000.CME is a much smaller yuan-trading hub than Hong Kong. Some who trade both over-the-counter and exchange-based options say it may take time for volume to pickup.”Trading volume of FX contracts remains a struggle for many exchanges, which are largely dominated by retail traders and very few large banks participate as market maker,” said Mukesh Dave, chief investment officer at Aravali Asset Management, a Singapore-based hedge fund. As of the end of March, open interest in April CNH futures on the CME totalled $49.3 million, compared to $448.9 million traded on the Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing, data from the two exchanges show.(This story has been corrected to fix typo in executive’s name in paragraph 7) More

Saudi Arabia and other members of the Opec+ group have announced surprise oil production cuts totalling more than 1mn barrels a day.Saudi Arabia will implement a “voluntary cut” of 500,000 b/d, or just under 5 per cent of its output, in “co-ordination with some other Opec and non-Opec countries”, it said on Sunday.The Saudi-led initiative has been deemed unusual because it was announced outside a formal Opec+ meeting, suggesting an element of urgency by the members taking part in the cuts.The cuts come after the collapse of the US’s Silicon Valley Bank caused a sharp fall in oil prices last month, and the forced takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS, which sparked fears of contagion in global financial markets and a significant drop-off in demand for crude.The surprise cuts also risk reigniting disputes between Riyadh and the US, which last year pushed for the kingdom to pump more oil in a bid to tame rampant inflation amid a surge in energy costs.Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:Economic data: S&P Global/Cips/Caixin final manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) data for Canada, China, EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and the US is released today.Manufacturing: Japan releases its Tankan large manufacturing index today.Space mission: Four astronauts who will orbit the Moon on the Artemis II mission — the first crewed flight test of the Space Launch System and Orion Spacecraft ahead of a future Moon landing — will be named by the US, Nasa and the Canadian Space Agency today.As always, thank you for reading FirstFT and let us know if you have any feedback at [email protected]. Five more top stories 1. Russian pro-war blogger has been killed in a St Petersburg restaurant blast. The attack injured 25 people, with 19 of them hospitalised. 2. Donald Trump’s lawyers will move to dismiss charges against him, as he awaits arraignment on Tuesday. The former president will plead not guilty, Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina said.3. Finland’s Sanna Marin concedes election defeat, as Finland’s centre-right opposition, the National Coalition party, clinched victory in Sunday’s parliamentary elections.4. Tesla rolls out a record number of new cars in the first quarter, delivering 422,875 vehicles in the first three months of 2023, up 4 per cent on the previous quarter.5. China presses Japan to change course on chip export curbs as Beijing takes a more active role in the face of a US sanctions regime that since late last year has sought to restrict global semiconductor-related exports to the Chinese mainland.The Big Read

Asma al-Assad makes a speech during the opening of the First International Development Conference of Syria, held by the Syria Trust for Development, in Damascus in 2010 © Khaled al-Hariri/Reuters

Syria’s first lady, Asma al-Assad, styles herself publicly as the Mother of the Nation — radiating maternal care. But privately, Asma has manoeuvred herself into a position of remarkable power, according to interviews with 18 people familiar with the regime’s operations, including heads of business, aid workers and former government officials. The FT’s Middle East Correspondent, Raya Jalabi, explores how a woman initially sidelined as an obstinate young newly-wed with lofty western ideals has since risen to become one of the most powerful people in the country.We’re also reading . . . Opinion: India premier Narendra Modi will struggle to cage the Gandhi dynasty, writes the FT’s John Reed, while some argue his expulsion from parliament will end up helping him by removing Gandhi as a plausible prime ministerial candidate, or actually building him up as a political martyr.2008 veteran: Colm Kelleher helped steer Morgan Stanley through the financial crisis. Now he hopes to do the same with UBS’s takeover of Credit Suisse. Climate Exchange: David Craig, co-chair of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, on how our economy is completely dependent on nature.Chart of the dayA large and fast-growing population of older migrant workers in China are taking on menial jobs to make ends meet, after being left behind by the country’s economic recovery. As factories across the country set age limits for job applicants at 40 years old (or even lower), older migrant workers — who disproportionately lack advanced education and skills that would allow them to transition into higher-paid or lower-intensity work — have turned to part-time work or industries known for harsh conditions.

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Take a break from the newsAfter two-and-a-half years of China’s zero-Covid policy, many visual artists have had enough. In this week’s Life and Arts section, Alex Colville explores the range of strategies visual artists have used to make themselves heard and test censorship’s new red line.

People in Shanghai last year show blank pages as a way to protest against China’s zero-Covid policy © Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images

Additional contributions by Tee Zhuo and Emily Goldberg More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets from Alden Bentley.A 13.6% year-over-year drop in South Korea’s March exports, reported on Saturday, was not as steep as feared, given the slowdown in global growth and a prolonged semiconductor slump. Asia will awake to another important breaking news story: An OPEC+ surprise 1.16 million barrels per day output cut announced on Sunday, which could well send crude prices higher on Monday. Asia’s data calendar across the rest of the week otherwise looks fairly tame and the main economic event for global markets will be U.S. payrolls data on Friday. Indeed, the week will be dotted with market closures for a variety of regional holidays leading up to Good Friday, when many global money centers shut for a day or more including Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bombay and the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Japan’s Nikkei and Seoul’s KOSPI will remain open. Those two on Friday ended the quarter up 7.5% and nearly 11% respectively, dovetailing with 7% S&P 500 and near 17% Nasdaq rallies in the first three months of 2023, even while those performances, the strongest quarter since June 2020 in Nasdaq’s case, belied traumatic slumps in global banking shares. While worry rightfully persists over bank capitalization, duration mismatches and general risk management after a year of central bank hikes, such positive overall quarters aren’t exactly the returns one might associate with panic over the global financial system — the existential crises of Credit Suisse, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank (OTC:SBNY) and First Republic Bank (NYSE:FRC) notwithstanding. So given the number of markets that are closed on, or before, Friday, the week could bring surprises of a pleasant, or not pleasant, variety. Investors might welcome a breather after the crisis/not-crisis, of recent weeks. But any surprise headlines, be they OPEC or bank related, will have to be digested by thinned markets, which can bring excessive market swings. So even with the buoyant benchmark quarters, it is hardly a moment for complacency.This week will bring CPI releases from Indonesia on Monday, South Korea on Tuesday and Thailand and the Philippines on Wednesday. The Reserve Bank of India meets and is expected to raise it’s repo rate on Thursday by 25 basis points to 6.75%.Here are three key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Monday:- S&P Global (NYSE:SPGI) final March manufacturing PMIs will be out- US ISM March manufacturing and prices paid indexes at 1400 GMT- Fed Board Governor Lisa Cook speaks at 2015 GMT More

Hello and welcome to the working week.In different times the next few days would involve at least an element of calm with the customs and ceremonies for Easter and Passover. This year these events, for which financial markets around the world take a collective break, are coinciding with the three-day Qingming Festival (aka Tomb Sweeping Day) in China and Taiwan, and the Muslim festival of Ramadan. So is it peace on earth? Sadly not.Firstly, and most obviously, comes the indictment of former US president Donald Trump in New York on Tuesday. The news — both expected and sudden — has thrust the nation into a new era of division. The FT will have it covered. Click here for further background and analysis, including Joshua Chaffin’s excellent profile of the man presiding over the case, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg.Tensions between Washington and Beijing are also spiking again, this time over the ongoing tour of the Americas by Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen. It will reach a head on Wednesday when she meets US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California, which has been labelled “another provocation” by Beijing.It is also set to be another week of industrial unrest. The strikes in Britain this week range from driving examiners to dockyard workers. The news is likely to be both depressingly familiar and tinged with hope of settlements. On the one hand there will be more disruption and threats of further action. However, the government (or rather the chancellor Jeremy Hunt) has now found some money down the back of the Treasury sofa to help settle matters, at least in the public sector. Further details of specific walkouts below.In France, the unions are overseeing further protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms. This is likely to have much wider consequences for Europeans looking to get away by air for the upcoming Easter holiday weekend as French air traffic controllers join the walkouts — in addition to the disruption of ongoing strikes at Heathrow.Talking of which, I am taking some time off, not travelling far (thankfully), just shepherding our 16-year-old through the final push of GCSE exam revision — still mildly anxiety-inducing for all concerned. There will be no disruption to the Week Ahead service, however, as I am leaving that duty in the very capable hands of my colleague on FT Edit David Hindley. Thank you to those who continue to share your thoughts on the Week Ahead. Email me at [email protected] or if this piece has landed in your inbox as a newsletter, hit reply.Economic dataIt’s a short week for many financial markets, but there will be a steady flow of statistics, notably the Bank of Japan’s first-quarter Tankan manufacturing index, manufacturing and services purchasing managers’ index reports and, on Friday US labour data.India and Australia’s central banks will consider interest rate changes, with the former expected to raise its Repo rate a further 25 basis points to 6.75 per cent and the latter likely to hold at 3.60 per cent.CompaniesWe don’t usually highlight annual meetings on the Week Ahead lists, but then it’s not every week that you get one likely to be as heated as the gathering for Credit Suisse at the Hallenstadion in Zurich on Tuesday.Expect protests, not just among Credit Suisse shareholders but also Swiss nationals. There is a lot of public anger across the cantons about the failed bank’s rescue deal — listen to the inside story of how that all happened on the FT’s Behind the Money podcast — and opprobrium about the shortcomings of the board and management team that contributed to the company’s downfall. Then, a day later, UBS holds its AGM in Basel.Elsewhere, it’s thin gruel for earnings news, as you’d expect in the run-up to a long weekend holiday. We’re at the back-end of the results season, so it’s mainly trading updates and production reports.Key economic and company reportsHere is a more complete list of what to expect in terms of company reports and economic data this week.MondayCanada, China, EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US: S&P Global/Cips/Caixin final manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) dataJapan, Tankan large manufacturing index (AM local time)Turkey, March consumer price index (CPI) and retail price index (RPI) inflation rate dataMark Parker becomes chair of Walt Disney, succeeding Susan Arnold, whose leadership was called into question last year over the company’s handling of former chief executive Bob Chapek’s final months in the jobResults: Renew Holdings H1 trading updateTuesday100th anniversary of Warner Brothers Pictures, being incorporated by founding brothers Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack WarnerAustralia, cash-rate target decisionBank of England chief economist Huw Pill gives a speech titled Inflation, Persistence and Monetary Policy at the International Centre for Monetary and Banking Studies in GenevaCredit Suisse holds its annual meeting in ZurichGermany, February trade balance figuresSouth Korea, consumer price index (CPI) inflation rate dataResults: Accesso FY, Saga FYWednesdayBank of England Monetary Policy Committee’s Silvana Tenreyro part of a panel discussion on co-ordinating monetary, fiscal and financial policy at the Royal Economic Society annual conference in GlasgowFrance, February industrial production figuresGermany, February industrial orders dataIsrael, financial markets close for PassoverCanada, EU, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US: S&P Global/Cips final services PMI dataUBS Group holds its annual meeting in BaselResults: Barry Callebaut H1, Co-operative Group FY, ConAgra Brands Q3, EnQuest FY, Foxconn March sales update, Hilton Food Group FY, Lookers FY, Pirelli FY, RS Group trading update, Sodexo H1, Topps Tiles H1 trading statement, Volvo Cars March sales updateThursdayCanada, March unemployment rateDenmark, Mexico, Norway, Spain and other countries: financial markets closed for Maundy Thursday holidayGermany, industrial production dataIndia, Repurchase rate decisionUK, S&P Global/Cips construction PMI dataUK, Halifax House Price IndexUK, Start of new tax yearResults: Ermenegildo Zegna FY, Ferrexpo Q1 production report, Levi Strauss & Co Q1, Robert Walters Q1 trading update, WD-40 Company Q2FridayAcross the world financial markets will be closed for the Good Friday holidayUS, Department of Labor employment reportWorld eventsFinally, here is a rundown of other events and milestones this week. MondayFiftieth anniversary of Motorola employee Martin Cooper making a call in New York to rival AT&T’s research division Bell Laboratories, widely regarded as the world’s first mobile phone conversationUK, further industrial unrest. More than 1,000 Passport Office workers in the Public and Commercial Services union begin a five-week walkout over pay. PCS members at the British Library resume their strike, joined by British Museum workers later in the week, part of a national campaign by the union over pay, pensions, job security and redundancy terms. Today is also the deadline set by the British Medical Association for the government to make “specific and substantial proposals” to avoid a statutory strike ballot of senior doctors in England. Separately, the National Education Union is expected to announce at its conference the results of its ballot of teachers in England on the government’s latest pay offer, which closed yesterday. The NEU has recommended that members reject it.US, Nasa and the Canadian Space Agency name the four astronauts who will orbit the Moon on the Artemis II mission, the first crewed flight test of the Space Launch System and Orion Spacecraft ahead of a future Moon landingTuesdayBelgium, foreign ministers from Nato alliance member states gather in Brussels for a meeting chaired by secretary-general Jens StoltenbergUK, Royal Mail’s new stamp designs with the image of King Charles go on general sale. Stamps with Queen Elizabeth remain valid.US, Donald Trump due to be arraigned in court in New York, the first criminal charges brought against a former president in the country’s historyWednesdayJewish festival of Passover beginsChina/Hong Kong/Taiwan: financial markets shut for the three-day Ching Ming festivalEU, European Commission to publish its proposed overhaul of the economic bloc’s pharmaceuticals legislationUK, up to 1,500 driving examiners and test centre admin staff at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency resume strike action organised by the PCS unionUS, Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen meets Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles at the end of a 10-day trip to the Americas. A US venue was chosen over Taipei to avoid further upsetting relations with China. But Beijing has still labelled the get together “another provocation”.ThursdayFrance, an 11th day of strikes and protests is planned to take place across the country in opposition to the Macron government’s pension reformsUK, Royal Maundy Service at Buckingham Palace, attended by King Charles and Queen Consort Camilla, who then distribute small silver coins known as “Maundy money” as symbolic alms to a group of local peopleUS Masters golf tournament begins in Augusta, GeorgiaFridayUK, Unite union members who refuel naval ships employed by Serco at Devonport Dockyard in Plymouth begin their weekend strike in a row over rotasUS, SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch of the Intelsat 40e communications satellite from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in FloridaVatican City, Pope Francis due to preside over the celebration of the Lord’s Passion, part of Good Friday celebrations by western churchesSaturdayJapan, Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s term of office ends. Kazuo Ueda will succeed him from tomorrowUK, Old Firm derby in the Scottish Premiership between Celtic and Rangers in GlasgowSundayIsrael, Palm Sunday procession from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem city centre for Orthodox Holy Week, which culminates next SundayUK, Church of England begins a 28-day period of prayer leading up to the coronation of King Charles next monthEaster Sunday celebrated by the western Christian churches More