Edward Ding – Vanderbilt Business Review

Nov

29

2022

Rate Hikes and Legoland: South Korea’s Bond Market Woes

All Posts, Economy and Government

By Edward Ding (image: iStock) For the South Korean bond market, 2022 has gone from bad to worse. Markets in Korea have been grappling with the same macro problems that have afflicted much of the world: high inflation, global recession fears, and monetary tightening have all converged to crimp corporate profits, breed uncertainty, and generally create a volatile financial environment. The Bank of Korea continues to follow the Fed in its regime of rapid rate hikes, a policy that has steadily pushed up borrowing costs in the local debt market. The uncertain macro environment has dampened investor demand, and issuers…

Oct

30

2022

By Edward Ding

Leveraged Finance: Where We Are and How We Got Here

All Posts, Finance and Business Insight

By Edward Ding (Featured image: creative common license) It would be an understatement to say that corporate debt is important. From Coca-Cola toTwitter, corporations are frequent borrowers that use bonds and loans to fund a wide range of difference business activities. Much of this debt financing occurs on the public markets, where investors supply capital in exchange for portions of debt. Leveraged finance, which refers to corporate debt rated at below investment grade (i.e., high-yield debt, “junk bonds”), constitutes a relatively riskier but still vital portion of these markets. By looking deeper into the present state of leveraged finance, we…

Sep

25

2022

By Edward Ding

Financial Greenwashing for Dummies (and other related concepts)

All Posts, Sustainability

By Edward Ding Sustainability, ESG, GBPs. What do any of these things actually mean? Before we can get into a discussion about financial greenwashing, we first need to understand the meaning of “green” and a few other ideas. Our first definition is of principles related to ESG: Environmental, Social, and Governance. “Environmental” refers to how a business affects the world’s natural resources, especially in terms of climate change; “Social” refers to a business’ relationship to the communities and people that it serves, employs, or coexists with; “Governance” refers to the way a business regulates itself, prevents wrongdoing, and ensures ethical…

Mar

24

2022

By Edward Ding

Down But Not Out: SMIC’s Rocky Path Forward

All Posts, Industries

By: Edward Ding December 18, 2020 was a particularly bad day for SMIC, China’s largest semiconductor manufacturer. The U.S. government blacklisted dozens of Chinese companies, including SMIC, and effectively restricted their purchase of advanced U.S. technology. SMIC, already behind foreign competitors in terms of chip technology, found its plans for catch-up innovation further complicated; its production processes were and continue to be significantly reliant on American tools, equipment, and components. The blacklist’s detrimental effect has yet to fade, but SMIC is likely turning to a different, domestically-oriented path to the technological frontier. Semiconductors, also known as chips, are an essential…