Category: 3. Business

The transition to a sustainable economy is urgent, but it must be fair to all. This is especially true for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC): one of the most climate-vulnerable regions, the most unequal in socioeconomic terms, and among the richest in biodiversity. Without a just approach to climate action, an estimated 2.4 to 5.8 million more people in the region could fall into extreme poverty by 2030 [1].

Adopting a just transition approach can not only support communities but also strengthens risk management and opens new markets to create long-term value for both businesses and society. UNEP FI’s latest report, released today at COP30 in Belém, Brazil provides practical guidance on how banks and insurers operating in LAC can adopt a holistic and coherent approach that integrates climate, social, and human rights dimensions across their institution’s strategies, governance, internal operations, and product and service development. It includes input from 16 LAC-based UNEP FI member institutions and 17 advisory institutions including academia, multilateral development banks and civil society organizations. 

A just transition – which takes a fair and inclusive approach to the transition to low-carbon economies – enables financial institutions to strengthen risk management related to the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, alongside growing social inequality. At the same time, it presents an opportunity for value creation by opening new markets, mobilizing capital toward sustainable outcomes, and supporting communities. For example, achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 could generate US$2.7 trillion in savings across the LAC region alone [2], underscoring that a just transition is not only essential but is also an opportunity for sustainable development and inclusive growth. 

Examples of just transition approaches include developing financial solutions that advance climate action while promoting social goals, strengthening mechanisms to prevent and mitigate negative social impacts from the transition, and engaging key local stakeholders. Indigenous Peoples are essential partners in this process: they represent nearly 10% of the region’s population and sustainably manage large areas of forested land, yet they receive less than 1% of direct climate finance [3].

Developed in Spanish, this report reflects the realities and needs of institutions across the region. It highlights the regional context and showcases real-world examples of some of the financial instruments that members are using to benefit their businesses and the communities they serve.  

Download the report in Spanish here.

Download the executive summary in English or Portuguese.

Read more about UNEP FI’s work on Just Transition here.

 

[1] Banco Mundial, “Acción climática en América Latina y el Caribe — Panorama general”

[2] Blackman, A., Cavallo, E. A., Hoffmann, B. y Vogt-Schilb, A. (2024). Peligro y promesa: enfrentar el cambio climático en América Latina y el Caribe. Resumen ejecutivo. Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID).

[3] Rainforest Foundation Norway. Falling short: Donor funding for Indigenous Peoples and local communities to secure tenure rights and manage forests in tropical countries (2011–2020). 2021.

Westlake (WLK) is taking steps to shore up its balance sheet following the company’s recent series of debt refinancing transactions. By issuing new fixed-rate senior unsecured notes and retiring a portion of its 2026 debt, Westlake is actively improving its debt maturity profile.

See our latest analysis for Westlake.

The refinancing moves may be aimed at boosting financial flexibility, but Westlake’s recent momentum has moved in the opposite direction. Its 1-month share price return sits at -19.1% and the 1-year total shareholder return is down nearly 50%. Recent dividend affirmations and the company’s efforts to manage debt have not yet shifted sentiment, as risk perception appears to linger in a bearish market environment.

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Given the sharp drawdown and recent moves to bolster its financial footing, does Westlake’s current valuation suggest a true bargain for forward-looking investors? Or has the market already priced in the company’s future trajectory?

Westlake’s current share price of $62.56 trades noticeably below the fair value estimated in the most widely followed narrative, hinting at a potential opportunity if the underlying assumptions hold true. The large disconnect between market sentiment and analyst projections creates plenty of intrigue about what is powering this valuation gap.

Structural infrastructure demand and demographic trends create stable growth opportunities for HIP, with Westlake benefiting from balanced exposure to both new construction and repair markets. Cost-cutting, strategic integration, and a focus on sustainability enhance margin resilience, support consistent cash flow, and reduce exposure to cyclical risks.

Read the complete narrative.

Want to know what numbers drive this huge perceived discount? There is one key forecast baked in—hint: it is big earnings growth and a surge in profit margins. Curious if these bold projections really explain the fair value story? Don’t miss the deeper details just beneath the surface.

Result: Fair Value of $82.21 (UNDERVALUED)

Have a read of the narrative in full and understand what’s behind the forecasts.

However, persistent global oversupply and rising feedstock costs could pressure Westlake’s margins and challenge the bullish undervaluation case if these headwinds intensify.

Find out about the key risks to this Westlake narrative.

If you see things differently or want to dig into the numbers yourself, you can craft your own perspective in just a few minutes: Do it your way.

A great starting point for your Westlake research is our analysis highlighting 3 key rewards and 1 important warning sign that could impact your investment decision.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Companies discussed in this article include WLK.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com

Coty (COTY) finds itself navigating a complex period after reporting adjusted profit below expectations. This was driven by its ongoing exit from the Gucci fragrance license and reduced orders from major retail partners.

See our latest analysis for Coty.

Recent weeks have brought a steady drumbeat of news, from Coty’s lawsuit over the Gucci beauty license loss to board changes and new earnings guidance. While uncertainty around its fragrance partnerships lingers, the market’s mood is clear: Coty’s year-to-date share price return stands at -48.98%, and its one-year total shareholder return has slipped to -51.39%. The trend shows momentum is still fading both short and long term, putting the focus firmly on management’s strategy for a turnaround.

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With shares now trading at a significant discount to analyst targets, amid ongoing legal and operational uncertainty, the key question is whether Coty is undervalued, or if the market is already factoring in all future risks and rewards.

On a narrative basis, Coty’s fair value estimate of $5.04 sits well above its latest close at $3.50, hinting at a sizable disconnect and drawing fresh attention to the financial expectations and assumptions that power this view.

Innovation-led launches, including blockbusters such as HUGO BOSS Bottled Beyond, additional high-profile fragrance releases, and an aggressive expansion into the rapidly growing body/perfume mist category, are set to benefit from the surging demand for prestige scenting products across diverse demographics. This supports revenue gains and sustains high profitability.

Read the complete narrative.

Want to know the numbers behind this upside? The future of Coty’s valuation hangs on a bold turnaround: reinvention, premium demand, and a profitability surge. The secret lies in breakthrough earnings estimates, profit margin improvements, and a narrative betting big on Coty’s brand power. Uncover what analysts are really projecting behind the scenes.

Result: Fair Value of $5.04 (UNDERVALUED)

Have a read of the narrative in full and understand what’s behind the forecasts.

However, persistent retailer destocking and ongoing weakness in the beauty category could delay Coty’s turnaround, despite recent optimism about innovation and premium demand.

Find out about the key risks to this Coty narrative.

If you see things differently, or want to chart your own path, it only takes a few minutes to dive into the data and shape your own view. Do it your way.

A good starting point is our analysis highlighting 3 key rewards investors are optimistic about regarding Coty.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Companies discussed in this article include COTY.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com

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A top former Federal Reserve official will be investigated by the central bank’s internal watchdog over discrepancies in her financial disclosures, a long-awaited ethics report said.

Adriana Kugler resigned from the Fed in August, months before her term was due to end. A public financial disclosures report she filed stated that ethics officials declined to certify that transactions made last year were compliant with the Fed’s rules.

The ethics disclosure, which was published on Saturday, showed that in 2024 Kugler bought and sold shares in individual stocks including Cava and Southwest Airlines, and sold shares in Apple, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet and Caterpillar.

The Fed’s rules forbid the purchase and sale of individual stocks and other securities by senior officials during the 10-day blackout period around Federal Open Market Committee meetings. Officials must hold most securities, including equities, for a minimum of 45 days.

The disclosure also indicated that Kugler owned an interest in Fidelity’s Select Semiconductor Fund, but had not complied with rules which require officials to turn off automatic dividend reinvestment.

Sean Croston, a deputy associate general counsel at the Federal Reserve, said in the report that Kugler had been referred to the central bank’s internal watchdog.

“Consistent with our standard practices and policies, matters related to this disclosure were referred earlier this year by the Board’s Ethics Office to the independent Office of Inspector General for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,” Croston said in the disclosure.

Kugler’s disclosure, which contains her own interpretation of her financial records and has not been certified by the Fed, stated that “certain trading activity was carried out by Dr Kugler’s spouse, without Dr Kugler’s knowledge, and she affirms that her spouse did not intend to violate any rules or policies”.

The Fed’s internal rules also cover senior officials’ spouses. Discrepancies involving financial transactions by Kugler’s husband had previously come to light.

Kugler’s surprise resignation came at a precarious time for the US central bank, which has faced a barrage of attacks from the Trump administration over rate-setters’ refusal to back interest rate cuts. 

She had been expected to remain on the Fed board until her term ended in January. Her abrupt resignation paved the way for Donald Trump to nominate Stephen Miran to temporarily fill her seat on the board.

Kugler did not attend a policy vote immediately before her resignation in late July. Fed officials said that before the meeting she had requested a waiver of the FOMC trading policies in order to address earlier transactions that had breached the Fed’s rules.

The matter was discussed with Fed chair Jay Powell and the waiver was refused. Kugler did not attend the July meeting, reportedly for personal reasons. She resigned days later.

Kugler did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Fed tightened up its ethics rules after scandals involving then-vice chair Richard Clarida and Federal Reserve Bank presidents Eric Rosengren and Robert Kaplan which emerged in 2021.

Story Continues

By Brett Arends

Lone Nvidia bear Jay Goldberg shares why he’s still not a buyer of the AI superstock

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, the man of the moment.

How does it feel to be the only analyst on Wall Street who is bearish about AI superstock Nvidia Corp. (NVDA)?

“It feels fantastic,” Jay Goldberg tells me with a laugh. “Everybody asks me this question.”

Goldberg, a research analyst at Seaport Research Partners, is the only analyst with a “sell” or “underperform” recommendation on Nvidia’s stock. Of the other 65 (yes, really), 60 give stock a “buy” or “outperform” rating and five give it a neutral “hold,” according to FactSet.

“I have never told my clients to ‘short’ Nvidia,” he adds, referring to the technique for trying to make money if a stock falls. “But I’ve always positioned my thesis as, ‘Nvidia is going to underperform the sector.’ And that has actually played out. If you look at the AI sector, Nvidia has underperformed since April 1 when I launched coverage.”

Goldberg is a former research analyst at Deutsche Bank. He also worked in the tech sector. He spent a decade in China and remains in touch with former colleagues there, while staying on top of developments. One of the (many) reasons he’s skeptical about Nvidia’s stock at current levels is that Taiwan Semiconductor, the company that actually produces the physical chips, is already running at full capacity. “They’re sold out,” he says. “And once they’ve sold out, where does the upside come from?”

But Goldberg’s analysis isn’t just about Nvidia stock. His thesis is important for everyone who invests in the stock market, even if they just have their 401(k) invested in broad-based index funds that track the S&P 500 SPX. When the last two bubbles burst, in 2000 and 2008, it wasn’t just the investments at the center of the mania – technology stocks and housing, respectively – that tanked. The entire market went down about 50%.

A market is supposed to match buyers and sellers. If you run out of sellers, that’s when you get in trouble. One of the oldest saws on the street of shame is that a bubble doesn’t peak “until the last bear turns bullish.” (Based on the events of 1999-2000 and 2006-07, it’s probably more accurate to say it doesn’t peak until the last bear capitulates or gets fired.)

Goldberg is standing his ground.

“It’s complicated,” he says.” I’m getting increasingly bearish about the AI cycle, the AI bubble. I fully subscribe to this as a bubble. Semiconductors are cyclical. Eventually, gravity will reassert itself. This could end in six weeks. It could end in three years.”

We’re already at the stage where big companies, particularly Nvidia, ChatGPT-owner OpenAI and others, are providing the capital to their own customers. This so-called “vendor financing” was a notorious feature of the dot-com and tech bubble of the late 1990s, and dragged everything down when the bubble burst.

Goldberg says things could get “even crazier” as companies issue massive amounts of debt to fuel their expansion. And that is starting to happen.

Meanwhile, the investment euphoria for the emerging technology of artificial intelligence has outstripped the proven demand from end customers.

“I’m especially nervous about the demand side of the AI trade,” he says. “I don’t think we fully understand the use case of AI. Enterprise adoption is tepid,” referring to usage by businesses.

A recent study by MIT found that 95% of the companies that have invested in AI have so far earned “zero return.” Meanwhile, up the road from MIT at Harvard Business School, the latest business review asks – with a straight face – “AI Companies Don’t Have a Profitable Business Model. Does That Matter?”

As MarketWatch has recently written, hedge-fund manager Harris “Kuppy” Kupperman, among others, has already run a slide rule over the math of the AI mania and found it comes up short.

Goldberg argues that many investors underestimate how expensive it is to run AI cloud-computing server farms, which need an enormous amount of electricity. He also says AI chips will be rendered obsolete far quicker than many in the industry say.

“The more important question is not the physical life of the server, it’s the economic life of the server,” Goldberg says. “In 2022, if you had a GPU, you could pay for it in six months. Now the payback is still somewhere between 11/2 and two years.” That’s “still pretty good,” he says. But the direction is down. “What matters is the obsolescence factor.”

This is an argument already made by Michael Burry, the hedge-fund manager made famous by Michael Lewis’s “The Big Short,” which successfully predicted the global financial crisis in 2008. Burry recently started betting against AI superstocks such as Nvidia. “He’s onto something,” Goldberg says.

In a surprising and mysterious development, Burry just deregistered his hedge fund, Scion Asset Management, from the Securities and Exchange Commission. “On to much better things Nov. 25th,” he wrote. It’s not clear yet what Burry means. But if he’s a bear who’s capitulating, that’s another ominous sign.

-Brett Arends

This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

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Belém, Brazil, November 2025 — The United Nations-convened Forum for Insurance Transition (FIT) today unveiled a landmark global guide that links underwriting and investment portfolios of insurance and reinsurance companies through a pioneering set of “Total Balance Sheet Principles” for transition planning.

“A Total Balance Sheet Transition: A holistic transition plan guide linking the underwriting and investment portfolios of insurers and reinsurers” provides insurers, reinsurers and brokers with a practical, principles-based framework to develop and disclose credible, enterprise-wide transition plans. The guide defines the essential components of a total balance sheet approach—grounded in cognitive consonance—and sets out clear criteria, principles and practical examples that help insurers better identify and manage risks, opportunities and impacts, , strengthen financial resilience, and support real-economy transition outcomes.

The new guide is the third deliverable of the FIT Transition Plan Project:

• The first deliverable of the FIT Transition Plan Project, Closing the Gap (November 2024), introduced the foundations of transition planning for the insurance industry and mapped national policy and regulatory frameworks relevant to transition plans, climate and sustainability risk management, and disclosure across developed and developing countries.
• The second deliverable, Underwriting the Transition (July 2025), provided deep-dive transition plan guidance tailored to insurance and reinsurance underwriting portfolios, outlining the respective roles of insurers, reinsurers and brokers.
• This third deliverable—developed in two phases—operationalizes the convergence of underwriting and investment transition plans, ensuring that earlier FIT guidance can be implemented as part of one coherent Total Balance Sheet framework.

Together, these deliverables form the most comprehensive, insurance-specific transition plan guidance available to date.

We recently published 11 Stocks Jim Cramer Talked About. Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is one of the stocks Jim Cramer recently discussed.

Networking hardware equipment manufacturer Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) reported its fiscal first-quarter earnings report on Wednesday. The results saw the firm report $14.88 billion in revenue and $1 in EPS which beat analyst estimates of $14.77 billion and $0.98. Citing orders from hyperscalers, Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) outlined that its networking business saw revenue grow by 15% to $7.77 billion during the quarter. After yesterday’s close and the latest earnings, Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)’s current forward P/E ratio sits at 19, according to Yahoo Finance. Cramer discussed the firm ahead of the earnings report and assured viewers that the Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) of 2025 wasn’t equivalent to the one in 1999:

“[On upcoming earnings] Yeah and we own it for the charitable trust. It’s not expensive by the way. Now the last time it was at these levels, it was very expensive. Now you’re talking about 1999, but that’s a company that sells at 16 times earnings. It’s not the one that’s historically blowing up to anybody. Doesn’t blow people off.

While we acknowledge the potential of CSCO as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and have limited downside risk. If you are looking for an extremely cheap AI stock that is also a major beneficiary of Trump tariffs and onshoring, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock.

READ NEXT: 30 Stocks That Should Double in 3 Years and 11 Hidden AI Stocks to Buy Right Now.

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.