The Big Interview

Pablo de Ramón-Laca is director general of the treasury and financial policy at Spain's Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation. That places him in charge of the world's ninth largest sovereign debt stock, according to S&P data, for a country pummelled by the Covid-19 pandemic. Spain has the second highest number of cases in the EU and the seventh highest in the world. But even that is not the full story of the pandemic's impact.

Sovcombank, one of Russia’s largest private banks, is making strides in its push to reshape Russia’s financial services marketplace. Dmitry Gusev, its chief executive, talks to GlobalCapital about the bank and its plans for 2021, ahead of a possible IPO.

Veteran equity analyst and forensic accountant Steve Clapham believes it is stories that drive investment decisions and seldom cold analysis of financial accounts. But he believes it is hard to find a company which isn’t engaged in some level of financial wrongdoing and argues that auditors are blind to it, wilfully or otherwise.

Carlos ‘Sonny’ Dominguez, finance minister of the Philippines, has been forced to swap long-term planning for emergency responses to the coronavirus. He talks to GlobalCapital about what comes next.

Kyle Bass, made famous by shorting the US housing market in the run up to the financial crisis, has told GlobalCapital that the Chinese state is a paper tiger on the road to collapse. The Texan, who has been on a fierce campaign against the Chinese Communist Party for years now, says that US politicians are finally catching up with his position.

Gabriel Grego, managing partner and chief investment officer at Quintessential Capital, is known among investors for his devastating critiques of fraudulent companies. A former paratrooper in the Israeli Defence Force, Grego is on what he sees as a moral crusade to sniff out corporate corruption. He is adamant, he tells GlobalCapital, that activist short selling is a force for good in financial markets — and society as a whole.

Hugh Hendry, the outspoken founder of former macro hedge fund Eclectica Asset Management, told GlobalCapital he sees no evidence for the re-emergence of global macro as a broad and viable investment strategy. Were volatility to rise again, Hendry says he may well get back into the financial fray but the likelihood of that is vanishingly slim.

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), which holds almost $400bn of assets under management, has played a critical role in maintaining financial stability during the coronavirus pandemic. Alireza Zaimi, head of corporate finance at the PIF, tells GlobalCapital how the fund weathered a commodity shock of unprecedented proportions, how the crisis has shaped its investment choices, and how its funding strategy has held up.

Beijing-headquartered Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has played a pre-eminent role in tackling Covid-19 this year, mainly by offering financial support to countries like Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Vietnam to combat the impact of the pandemic. But its work is not nearly over, as second and third waves of the coronavirus hit countries around the world.

Thomas Hugger has more than two decades of investment experience in frontier markets. Volatility is part of the job description. But he has never faced challenges like those unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Oleg Mukhamedshin, deputy chief executive of Rusal, which produces 9% of the world’s aluminium, tells Mariam Meskin how the company has weathered yet another rocky period in commodity markets. And how its sustainability credentials have been affected by oil spills at its affiliate, Norilsk Nickel, in May and June.

Anne Stevenson-Yang is a director and co-founder of J Capital Research, a New York firm and short seller that specialises in Chinese companies, as well as international companies looking to grow their business in China. GlobalCapital spoke to Stevenson-Yang about the dangers of trusting financial reporting from China, and steps stock exchanges could take to stifle the likelihood of fraud.