Don’t ignore the risks of retail bonds

The price crash of a London-listed bond should be a salutary reminder that some retail bonds are riskier than investors believe. Marina Gerner explains.

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"The biggest retail bond crash in the market's history has quietly taken place," says Kyle Caldwell in The Daily Telegraph. A London-listed bond issued by Eros International, an Indian film production and distribution company, has slumped by more than 50% in three weeks, the worst performance of any security since the launch of the London Stock Exchange's order book for retail bonds (ORB) five years ago. Coming on the heels of sharp drops in bonds issued by oil explorers Enquest and Premier Oil, the crash should be a salutary reminder that some retail bonds are riskier than investors believe.

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Marina Gerner is an award-winning journalist and columnist who has written for the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist, The Guardian and Standpoint magazine in the UK; the New York Observer in the US; and die Bild and Frankfurter Rundschau in Germany.

Marina is also an adjunct professor at the NYU Stern School of Business at their London campus, and has a PhD from the London School of Economics.

Her first book, The Vagina Business, deals with the potential of “femtech” to transform women’s lives, and will be published by Icon Books in September 2024.

Marina is trilingual and lives in London.