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RASSEGNA STAMPA ESTERA 08 maggio 2020 INDICE PMI 08/05/2020 Financial Times 4 Start-up coaxes bank-shy Argentines to ditch cash STAMPA ESTERA 08/05/2020 New York Times International Edition 7 E.U. EXPECTS ITS WORST-EVER RECESSION 08/05/2020 New York Times International Edition 10 Factories are shut, but not this Corvette plant PRIME PAGINE 08/05/2020 Financial Times 13 PRIMA PAGINA PMI 1 articolo 08/05/2020 Pag. 6 La proprietà intellettuale è riconducibile alla fonte specificata in testa pagina. Il ritaglio stampa da intendersi per uso privato Technology. Digital finance Start-up coaxes bank-shy Argentines to ditch cash Coronavirus lockdown helps Tencent-backed Buenos Aires Challenger Ualà grow rapidly MICHAEL STOTT AND BENEDICI MANDER BUENOS AIRES Argentina is one of the world's toughest environments for investors, yet some of the biggest names in technology, including Tencent and SoftBank, have placed their first bets there on a fintech start-up that is reporting explosive growth amid the coronavirus lockdown. Launched in Buenos Aires in 2017 with the aim of persuading citizens in the largely cash-based economy to transact digitally, Ualà says that it has issued more than 1.9m debit cards and is signing up almost 0.5 per cent of Argentina's 44m population every month. "What we expected to happen over years is now happening over weeks," said Pierpaolo Barbieri, the 32-year-old Harvard-educated founder of Ualà. "Since the beginning of the quarantine 35 days ago, we have issued almost 140,000 cards, which is doublé our regular monthly issuance." Mr Barbieri moved his employees from Ualà's hipster warehouse-style offìces in the Argentine capital to work from home 10 days before the government imposed a lockdown in March. But he has kept hiring, with 50 joiners during the quarantine, making a total of more than 300 employees. "We prepare laptops remotely and send them to homes so staff are onboarded digitally," he said. "I met our new head of internai comms today and I met her virtually." In Ualà's favour is Argentina's large proportion of unbanked citizens. According to the 2017 World Bank global Findex study, only 49 per cent of Argentines have a bank account. Most cite excessive cost or onerous paperwork as the main deterrents. Argentina's banks have also been slow to innovate and are not universally trusted after numerous financial crises. "Ualà and other fintechs in Argentina, such as MercadoPago and Brubank, clearly show that if you offer the client a simple digitai product, they will quickly accept it," said Lucas Llach, an economist and former vice-president at the centrai bank. "This is aglobal phenomenon but Argentina has some advantages, such as complete interoperability between fintechs and banks through a single instant-payments system for ali accounts." Mr Barbieri recognises that MercadoLibre, the Amazon-like online retail giant that owns MercadoPago, is his biggest rivai but insists that "our main competitor remains cash. Seventy- five per cent of transactions in Argentina are stili made in cash." Here the pandemie has helped Ualà. Argentines can no longer go out, withdraw cash and pay bills at a neighbourhood payment point. Ualà's digitai bill-payments service, which uses Western Union as a partner, has had a 300 per cent increase in transactions during the past month. Asia has the most relevant experience in fintech Challenger banking for Latin America and Ualà has benefited from the experience in China of its hacker, Tencent, which has persuaded citizens to drop cash for digitai payments. But Mr Barbieri said he was inspired most by Simple, a small US banking start-up founded in Oregon in 2009, which was then acquired by Spain's BBVA. "It was started well before the European digitai banks and it was just that - a simple checking account with a white card, very simple UI UX [user interface, user experience] and it appealed to anyone," he explained. Ualà is not licensed to hold deposits; it is regulated as a payment service provider and must place ali its customers' money on deposit at another bank. It makes personal loans and plans to expand lending but will do so by raising outside capital. An Ualà money market savings fund, run with a locai partner, has attracted 380,000 customers. Wouter Gort, a partner in Greyhound Capital, which invested early in Ualà, said PMI - Rassegna Stampa 08/05/2020 - 08/05/2020 4 08/05/2020 Pag. 6 La proprietà intellettuale è riconducibile alla fonte specificata in testa pagina. Il ritaglio stampa da intendersi per uso privato the start-up's lack of access to customer deposits was not a problem. "Their dose relationships with their client base enable Ualà to provide a better guide to lending decisions than the traditional banks," he said. "In our view, at this point in the industry, depth of relationship and understanding of clients is more important than having access to [cheap] capital like the incumbents." Julie Ruvolo, director of venture capital at the Association for Private Capital Investment in Latin America, said that fintech had attracted the largest share of venture capital investment in the continent for four of the past fìve years. "You have a lack of legacy banking infrastructure and a significant proportion of the population unbanked or underbanked," she said. "There is demand for enabling payments, digitai transactions and consumer lending." Ualà completed a $150m series C funding round in November and says it has enough cash to last for the next two years, with break-even expected in 2022. The company's latest valuation was about $900m, according to tech data group CB Insights and confirmed by a person familiar with the matter, but an initial public offering is not a near-term prospect. Although Mr Barbieri would not comment on international expansion plans, Ualà is said to be eyeing other underbanked countries in the region, such as Colombia, Perù or Mexico. Brazil already has the biggest number of fintech challengers in the region, including the world's most valuable digitai bank start-up, Nubank, and is thus a less attractive target. Challenges abound. Government regulations do not allow Ualà to receive salary, pension or state-benefit payments directly into accounts, so these must pass through an established bank. Argentina's precarious economie situation is another worry, with the government heading towards a default this month on $83bn of foreign debt. Mr Barbieri wrote a book in his twenties on Nazi economics and the Spanish civil war and is no stranger to daunting financial situations. He said: "Obviously a default would be negative but we focus on servicing our clients . I want ali those clients that the banks never wanted, and the resttoo." Pierpaolo Barbieri, founder of Ualà, has seen customers flock to take up his debit cards as they can no longer get out to withdraw cash - Unbanked Latin America % of population •BWith bank accounts* I H With debit cards" UK US Chile Uruguay Brazil Argentina 0 20 40 60 80 100 Interest in Latin American fintechs has risen sharply Annual venture capital investment ($bn) ' Financial institution account (ages 15-34) ** Debit card ownership Cage 15+) Sources: World Bank; Association for Private Capital Investment in Latin America Marcos Brindicci /Reuters PMI - Rassegna Stampa 08/05/2020 - 08/05/2020 5 STAMPA ESTERA 2 articoli 08/05/2020 Pag. 1 La proprietà intellettuale è riconducibile alla fonte specificata in testa pagina. Il ritaglio stampa da intendersi per uso privato STAMPA ESTERA - Rassegna Stampa 08/05/2020 - 08/05/2020 7 08/05/2020 Pag. 1 La proprietà intellettuale è riconducibile alla fonte specificata in testa pagina. Il ritaglio stampa da intendersi per uso privato STAMPA ESTERA - Rassegna Stampa 08/05/2020 - 08/05/2020 8 08/05/2020 Pag. 1 La proprietà intellettuale è riconducibile alla fonte specificata in testa pagina. Il ritaglio stampa da intendersi per uso privato STAMPA ESTERA - Rassegna Stampa 08/05/2020 - 08/05/2020 9 08/05/2020 Pag. 7 La proprietà intellettuale è riconducibile alla fonte specificata in testa pagina. Il ritaglio stampa da intendersi per uso privato STAMPA ESTERA - Rassegna Stampa 08/05/2020 - 08/05/2020 10 08/05/2020 Pag. 7 La proprietà intellettuale è riconducibile alla fonte specificata in testa pagina. Il ritaglio stampa da intendersi per uso privato STAMPA ESTERA - Rassegna Stampa 08/05/2020 - 08/05/2020 11 PRIME PAGINE 1 articolo 08/05/2020 Pag. 1 PRIMA PAGINA La proprietà intellettuale è riconducibile alla fonte specificata in testa pagina. Il ritaglio stampa da intendersi per uso privato FINANCIAL TIMESEUROPE FRIDAY 8 MAY 2020 WORLD BUSINESS NEWSPAPER Climate vs recovery Body of knowledge Crude calculations Can we maintain green ambitions as Head-to-toe coronavirus symptoms Millennials slip up with bets on oil economy restarts? - DEBATE, PAGE 17 challenge medicai science - PAGE 15 rebound -MARKETS INSIGHT, PAGE 11 Briefing Americans signal rising unease • ECB resists pressure from German court Several members of the centrai bank's governing council have told the FT that they are determined it should not respond directly to the German court over Trump's handling of crisis which urged it to justify bond purchasing.- PAGE 2 • BA parent takes aim at UK border pian IAG has warned that it will not restart flying if Britain imposes a 14-day quarantine on passengers * Most trust governors more Poli highlights election challenge 33.5m lose jobs in weeks arriving in the country, saying it cannot foresee demand under those circumstances.- PAGE 6 LAUREN FEDOR — WASHINGTON CHRISTINE ZHANG — BALTIMORE • Neiman Marcus files for Chapter 11 Most American voters trust their state's The upmarket store chain that began by taking high governor over Donald Trump to decide fashion to Dallas in 1907, has become the latest when to reopen the US's stricken econ- retailer to be tipped over the edge by the shutdown- omy, according to a new poli for the It follows a similar move by J Crew.- PAGE 6 Financial Times that signals mounting dissatisfaction with the presidenti • Brussels seeks to steer dirty money fìght handling of the coronavirus crisis.