The Question Is...

While volatility may continue to rile global markets, we believe that currently, when it comes to hedged convertible bonds, they are well-positioned for value extraction. Sean Reynolds and Sarah George of the convertibles-based strategies team explain to host Ronald Temple why the unique asymmetry of the asset class can be a real advantage—and how volatility has the potential to be a source of return.

Consumer prices dominate headlines, but tight labor markets and upward pressure on wages might be better indicators of where the European Central Bank and Federal Reserve are currently heading. Host Ronald Temple discusses with Matthieu Grouès, CIO of Lazard Frères Gestion (LFG), the fascinating global macroeconomic picture: the potential for higher-than-expected interest rates and mild recessions in the United States and Europe, the uncertain outlook for spending in Europe next year, the complicated growth picture in China—and in the face of everything, the markets' stubborn “optimism.”

A harbinger of progress or a spark of false hope: Does October's CPI report mean that US inflation is finally easing? While it may be too early to draw firm conclusions, signs are encouraging. Host Ronald Temple and David Alcaly, a Senior Vice President and Research Analyst, unpack the CPI as well as private sector indices and find that abating supply chain issues, slowing jobs growth, moderating used-car prices, and even decelerating rents suggest the good news may be more than a flash in the pan.

Some believe the United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP, is purely ceremonial: Negotiations are agreed upon well in advance, and no meaningful change comes out of them. But this is not necessarily true. Tim Smith, a member of our ESG and Sustainable Investment team whose research focuses on the investment implications of climate change, explains to host Ron Temple why the impact of COP varies from year to year—and why this year's meeting, COP27, may be particularly impactful given the ongoing energy crisis in Europe, the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in the United States, and rising geopolitical tensions.

Investors' shift into value from growth stocks earlier this year was one of the most extraordinary rotations ever. In this episode, Director/Investment Strategist Jason Williams and host Ron Temple deconstruct equity market performance over the last 12 months to try to get a better sense of where we are in the stock selloff and where the markets may be headed.

Robert Wall, Head of Sustainable Private Infrastructure, speaks with host Ronald Temple about sustainable investing in the intriguing world of private infrastructure. They discuss the evolution and growth of the asset class, uncovering the opportunities, and creating a diversified portfolio of these long-term assets.

Over the past year, inflation has been a topic of great concern to investors in Europe and the United States. But emerging markets central banks led the world in raising interest rates to combat rising prices ̶ so what's happening now? In this episode, veteran emerging markets currency and debt investor Ganesh Ramachandran talks with host Ron Temple about the impact inflation is having on emerging markets economies, how central banks are reacting, and which economies are best positioned for the current environment.

Warryn Robertson, a Portfolio Manager/Analyst on the Global Listed Infrastructure, Global Equity Franchise, and Australian Equity teams, talks to host Ronald Temple about infrastructure's role as a potential inflation hedge, global differences in infrastructure companies, and key considerations for anyone investing in the space.

Credit expert Vincent Mistretta tells host Ron Temple that as the Fed raises rates amid high and rising inflation, markets are likely to become much more discerning about which companies are most vulnerable to margin compression, rising leverage ratios, and a slowing economy. Using history as a guide, the two discuss market liquidity, the potential for both ratings downgrades and spread-widening, and where the opportunities and pitfalls may be in this environment.

Oren Shiran, Managing Director and Portfolio Manager/Analyst on the Lazard US Systematic Team, talks to host Ronald Temple about his view of the US small cap market, including why small caps are trading at such a discount to large caps and why so many quality small caps have a particularly large discount right now.

In less than a week, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has raised questions about the future of those two countries and redrawn long-established political lines, uniting countries in Europe and beyond while isolating Russia. Nicholas Bratt, a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager/Analyst on the Global Thematic Equity strategy, talks with host Ronald Temple about both the potential short-term outcomes of the current fighting and the long-term impact, including the potential for escalation or a new Cold War.

In addition to being a Portfolio Manager/Analyst on our Global Thematic Equity strategy, Managing Director Steve Wreford is a student of history. In the second part of a two-part discussion, Wreford tells host Ronald Temple that the high valuations and investors' willingness to look past traditional profit measures remind him in some ways of the TMT bubble in the late 1990s. Find out how he thinks investors can prepare for a more volatile environment.

When prices first started rising, it was easy to chalk it up to the world's emergence from the depths of the pandemic. As base effects fade, however, that's getting harder. Steve Wreford, who is accustomed to thinking about structural change as a Portfolio Manager/Analyst on our Global Thematic Equity strategies, discusses increasing coordination between central banks and governments, policy and geopolitical shifts, and other factors driving higher prices with host Ron Temple.

We're taking a break for the holidays and will return in the new year with new episodes, new guests, and of course, new questions. Enjoy the holidays!

Inflation is at a multi-decade high in multiple countries. In the final episode of our first season, Ron Temple and Werner Krämer, a Managing Director and Economic Analyst based in Frankfurt, debate just how high inflation could go in both the short term and the long term and discuss the potent and vastly underappreciated pressure climate change is likely to put on prices going forward.

Global ports are clogged with container ships, the cost of hauling freight has skyrocketed, shortages have become commonplace … and did we mention the holidays are coming? Ron Temple and Keith Mori, a Senior Vice President and industrial analyst, trace the many threads snarling global supply chains and offer bull- and bear-case scenarios for how the shipping industry might untangle its knotty problem.

People are keen to write China's obituary as the government tightens regulations and tries to navigate a property bubble that appears likely to swallow one of its largest developers, says Philipp Hofflin, a Portfolio Manager/Analyst on the Australian Equity team. Another way to interpret things, he says, is that the government is proactively addressing systemic problems before it's too late ̶ and Western countries may want to take notes.

From cars to smartphones, manufacturers have been feeling the squeeze from a global shortage of semiconductors. In this episode, Director and Technology Analyst Robert Horton explains to Ron how fragile supply chains, geopolitics, and a global pandemic got us to this point and when we might expect to emerge.

Robots can do surgery, smart implantable devices can monitor your heart health, and artificial intelligence promises to cut the time and cost of developing new drugs. In other words, the digital revolution that has transformed other sectors of the economy is coming to healthcare. Rhett Brown, Managing Director and Research Analyst, walks host Ron Temple through the new technologies that could change medicine as we know it.

The latest United Nations climate report made it clear: Time is running out to prevent the most catastrophic events of climate change. In this episode, Ron Temple asks Jennifer Anderson, Managing Director and Co-Head of Sustainable Investment and ESG, what it would take to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions and what it would mean for investors.

Since easing measures started in the spring of 2020, the Big 4 central banks have purchased a total of $800 million in securities every hour of every day, and many emerging markets have experimented with quantitative easing ̶ a once unthinkable development. In this episode, Ron Temple and Aristotel Kondili, a Director and Portfolio Manager/Analyst specializing in emerging markets currencies, debt, and macroeconomics, discuss whether global central bankers can ever stop easing ̶ and whether it even matters.

If Japanese executives were more afraid of losing their jobs, it might actually be good for Japanese equities. Scott Anderson, a Director and Portfolio Manager/Analyst on the Japanese equities platform, discusses the Toshiba scandal, which resulted in the resignation of the CEO and rare dismissal of the Chairman of the Board earlier this year, as well as Japan's complex history with governance.

Is higher-than-expected inflation a sign of healthy economic growth or a potential spoiler? Or, are rising consumer prices indicative of nothing more than a transitory snapback from the pandemic? Host Ron Temple and David Alcaly, a Senior Vice President and Research Analyst at Lazard Asset Management, discuss which factors they are watching to assess how rising prices may affect markets going forward and the challenging task the US Federal Reserve faces in keeping inflation at a desirable level.

As Chinese bonds are added to global indices, many investors are set to see the country become a much bigger part of their emerging markets debt allocations. But with an economy second in size only to the United States and a flourishing technology sector, does China really belong in the emerging category? Arif Joshi, a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager/Analyst on Lazard's Emerging Markets Debt team, talks with Ron Temple about how investors should think about Chinese debt.

Twenty years ago, one thing predicted whether or not an emerging markets company would be successful: its access to plentiful capital. But things have changed dramatically, according to Rohit Chopra, a Portfolio Manager/Analyst on the Emerging Markets Equity team. Investors now need to consider a host of factors, including the competence of the management team, the runway for growth, valuations, and macroeconomic context. In this episode, Ron talks to Rohit about how investors can think about companies in the increasingly complex and fast-changing developing world.

What if we could prevent expensive, debilitating diseases such as diabetes or kidney disease instead of treating them? Or cure cancer instead of battling it? Ryan Hutchinson, a Portfolio Manager/Analyst on our Digital Health strategy, tells host Ron Temple why he believes an explosion in the availability and quality of biological data is about to transform the health care industry, with vast implications for both established players and newcomers. Or, as he put it, why he believes the large pharmaceutical companies of the future are in the incubation stage today.  

Ask investors where to find the most exciting growth story in emerging markets, and many would point to technology companies such as Alibaba or Meituan. However, Terrence Gray, a Director and Portfolio Manager/Analyst on the Bottom Billion strategy, tells host Ron Temple why he believes the greatest untapped potential in emerging markets lies in the companies that cater to the 2 billion people who are poised to move out of poverty and into the middle class over the next 20 years.

As Lazard's Co-Head of Sustainable Investment & ESG, Nikita Singhal hears a lot of ideas about the fast-evolving field of sustainable investing ̶ and not all of them are correct. In this episode, she discusses five of the most pervasive myths with host Ron Temple. Find out why investors don't have to choose between returns and sustainability, how sustainable investing has evolved to be about much more than a set of subjective personal values, and why the movement to incorporate sustainability into investment considerations is not a passing fad.

For the last decade, emerging markets equities have offered investors high volatility and low returns. However, Rohit Chopra, a Portfolio Manager/Analyst on the Emerging Markets Equity team believes that emerging markets equities are still one of the most exciting places to invest on the planet. Emerging economies have favorable demographics compared to the fast-aging developed markets, emerging markets companies are in some cases leapfrogging Western technology with their own innovations, and emerging markets stocks are available at a huge discount.

Convertible bond issuance is soaring. The securities offer investors the ability to capture the upside when a company's stock price is rising and fall back on bond-like defenses in times of trouble. Arnaud Brillois, a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager Analyst on the Global Convertibles team, tells Ron Temple why the bonds are so popular lately, how European and US markets differ, and why investors who want to play in the convertibles market need to read the fine print and pay attention.

The debate over value versus growth stocks has eclipsed a style that has outperformed them both over the last two decades: quality. But "quality" is one of those words that every investor wants to be associated with ̶ so what does it mean to be a true quality investor? In this episode, Louis Florentin-Lee, a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager/Analyst on the International Quality Growth strategy, Global Equity Select strategy, and others, describes how he and his team define quality, what makes the style a compelling investment choice, and what any of it has to do with toilets and anime.

US consumers are an important force for global economic growth. As vaccination efforts bring the end of the pandemic in sight, these buyers are flush with nearly $2 trillion in savings. What are they going to spend it on? Jay Levy, a Director and Research Analyst covering the US consumer sector, talks with Ron about how the calculus has changed for consumer companies and those who invest in them coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Women are vastly underrepresented in senior leadership positions at companies and on corporate boards. But is that an investment issue? Marina Leacock, a Director and Portfolio Manager/Analyst on the Minerva Gender Diversity Strategy, certainly thinks so. In this episode, she talks with Ron about why companies with more women on executive teams tend to earn higher returns, why the market hasn't solved the gender economic gap on its own, and why her strategy insists that companies are financially productive and inclusive.

Since the beginning of 2020, private companies have raised more than $100 billion through special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. That's more than all other initial public offerings (IPOs) combined over the same time period. Why are investors and companies looking to go public suddenly flocking to these vehicles? Ron and Dmitri Batsev, a Managing Director and research analyst focused on financial services companies, attempt to demystify SPACs, which are still unknown territory even for many professional investors.

In the 1920s, the end of both World War I and the Spanish influenza brought an explosion in consumption and a burst of technological innovation. Could it happen again in the 2020s? In this episode, Ron and Nathan Cockrell, Co-Director of Research and a senior analyst covering global consumer discretionary companies, discuss whether consumer spending will shoot up as more people are vaccinated against COVID-19 and what such a spending boom might look like.

Many investors conflate transformational change and the emergence of disruptive new companies. But what if we're thinking about market-bending change all wrong? In the second in a two-part series on long-term investing, Steve Wreford, a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager/Analyst on Lazard's Global Thematic strategies, discusses why the actions of incumbents are just as important as those of new, disruptive companies; why the healthcare sector is ripe for change and the companies best poised to capitalize on that change may not exist yet; and what the scarcest resource in the investment world is. (Hint: It's not money.)

Technology, geopolitics, COVID-19 vaccines, and a new approach to monetary policy…let's just say the next decade seems likely to be vastly different from the one gone by. In this episode, Ron talks to Steve Wreford, a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager/Analyst on our Global Thematic strategies, about why investors tend to throw up their hands at major long-tail risks, why downside risk gets more attention than upside risk, and how the response to the global financial crisis may have inadvertently created the conditions for the coming decade's single biggest threat to financial markets.

After nine months of living in a pandemic, two vaccines with a 95% efficacy rate have been approved in the US. But that's only the beginning. These vaccines and possibly others still need to be produced in large enough numbers to vaccinate large swaths of the world population, distributed under difficult conditions, and perhaps most importantly, embraced by the public. In this episode, Ron talks to Lazard's top healthcare analyst, Rhett Brown, about how all of this could unfold, when an end to the economic and existential misery of COVID-19 could be in sight, and what a return to "normal” might look like.

Massive debt loads, financed by printed money. Once upon a time, that might have described emerging markets, but the tables have turned. Ron asks Arif Joshi, a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager/Analyst on the Emerging Markets Debt team, how investors might know whether developed markets are in danger of using up their credibility with bond investors and finding themselves in a crisis like the ones that befell Russia and many Asian countries in the late 1990s.  

It can be hard to make the case for investing in bonds at a time when over $15 trillion worth of outstanding bonds fetch negative yields. In this episode, Yvette Klevan, a Portfolio Manager/Analyst on the Global Fixed Income team, argues that bonds still provide critical ballast to a portfolio and that attractive opportunities are available to those willing to diversify out of developed markets.  

In this episode, Ron asks Ross Seiden, a Portfolio Manager/Analyst who works on multiple US Equity strategies, including US Sustainable Equity, whether sustainable investing is more than hype. And if it isn't ̶ if sustainable companies really do produce higher returns over the long term ̶ why aren't all strategies explicitly focused on sustainability?