Breakingviews

U.S. airlines need more than a little help. The “Big Four” – Delta Air Lines, American Airlines, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines – have been pleading for additional bailouts as Covid-19 continues to crimp travel. More cheap money is an option. But consolidation would also help, and probably leave taxpayers – if not consumers – better off. In 2021, the big carriers will shrink from four to three.

Corona Capital is a column updated throughout the day by Breakingviews columnists around the world with short, sharp pandemic-related insights.

British punters may be surprised to learn that the owner of Ladbrokes, best-known for its chain of dingy betting shops, is the subject of takeover interest from MGM Resorts International, the $16 billion operator of plush U.S. casinos. The UK bookie, which on Monday said it had rebuffed several merger proposals, has good reasons to want more. But its negotiating power is limited.

When will 2020 end? That was a familiar lament across the globe as humanity shut down almost everything to cope with a common threat. The arrival of Covid-19 threw all our plans – not to mention predictions – to the wayside. Almost nothing that markets, investors or companies anticipated one year ago proved prescient.

Central bankers will spend 2021 trying to tame the debt monsters they made in 2020. The pandemic-induced market meltdown forced Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell to buy corporate debt for the first time, while European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde unveiled plans to spend an unprecedented 1.85 trillion euros propping up markets. Yet in helping resolve the crisis, rate-setters sowed the seeds of the next one.

Trade feuds will take on a different hue after the departure of Donald Trump. Slapping tariffs on countries out of the blue isn’t U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s style. But his determination to fight climate change could emerge as a new source of commerce tensions.

As the world faced up to its annus horribilis, Breakingviews’ readers showed a voracious and varied appetite for agenda-setting financial insight. Sure, the Covid-19 virus was on everyone’s mind, but an analysis of the most-read stories of the year proved our readers are rarely myopic.

Africa Rising may fast become Africa Uprising. After a decade of a debt-fuelled growth, the poorest continent always risked a difficult moment of reckoning. Depressed commodity prices and more circumspect foreign lenders will mean tighter budgets and unhappier citizens from Angola to Zimbabwe in the coming year. That’s a recipe for political instability, conflict and migration.

A Joe Biden-Xi Jinping reset will be unsatisfying; China’s economic revival will frustrate critics; Southeast Asia will be the next tech hot spot; HSBC will retreat from America; and Hong Kong’s exchange will rethink deals. Pete Sweeney, Jennifer Hughes and Robyn Mak discuss.