Features

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in  Africa) — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made a surprise re-entry into talks on a 2020 pandemic-relief package with a $916 billion proposal that opened a potential new path to a year-end deal despite objections from Democrats over elements of the plan. After largely leaving the task to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell since Election Day, Mnuchin pitched a $916 billion stimulus plan to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a Tuesday afternoon telephone call, more…

ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Ghanaian opposition leader John Mahama accused the ruling party of using the military to alter the results of Monday’s election. The government denied the allegation. Claims of election rigging are unusual in Ghana, Africa’s top gold producer and one of the continent’s most stable democracies. In the last vote in 2016, Mahama conceded defeat to President Nana Akufo-Addo before a final tally was announced. Ghana’s electoral commission said it’s delayed the release of…

LAGOS (Capitals in Markets in Africa) — There aren’t many contexts where $2 trillion seems like a paltry sum. Then a pandemic comes along. The economic fallout from Covid-19 has left insurers issuing existential warnings and businesses discovering they weren’t covered. It’s resulted in courts packed with lawsuits and governments scrambling to head off more pain. At the core is the reality that the global non-life insurance industry’s $2 trillion in the capital won’t last in a…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) — Joe Biden will be one formal step closer to the presidency after Tuesday’s deadline for states to certify their slates of electors to the Electoral College — locking in the names of the people who will formally vote to make Biden the president. Once that happens, there’s little turning back. Congress must by law accept those electors if there’s no outstanding litigation, and President Donald Trump’s legal challenges have…

ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Ghanaians voted Monday in a presidential election that’s expected to be tight, as the two front-runners face off for the third time. President Nana Akufo-Addo of the New Patriotic Party is seeking another four years at the helm of Africa’s top gold producer. His predecessor, John Mahama of the National Democratic Congress, aims to unseat him with a promise of mass infrastructure spending. The winner of Monday’s contest will…

New York(Bloomberg) — Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said Tuesday there will be a “smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” a remark which may have been in jest but throws fuel on the president’s unsubstantiated claims that the Nov. 3 election was fraudulent. “The world should have every confidence” that the Jan. 20 transitions will be successful, Pompeo said from the State Department podium in response to a reporter’s question about Joe Biden’s electoral…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — President-elect Joe Biden shrugged off Donald Trump’s effort to challenge the election results, forging ahead with transition planning even as the president pursues a multi-state legal fight backed by Republican allies and the Justice Department. Trump’s campaign on Tuesday said it would file a federal lawsuit in Michigan that seeks to stop the state’s top election official from certifying Biden’s win. The campaign filed a similar suit in Pennsylvania…