{"id":19679,"date":"2023-10-31T02:54:12","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T07:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=19679"},"modified":"2023-10-31T02:54:15","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T07:54:15","slug":"hamas-has-created-additional-demand-wall-street-eyes-big-profits-from-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=19679","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hamas has created additional demand\u2019: Wall Street eyes big profits from war"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The United Nations has warned that there was \u201cclear evidence\u201d that war crimes may have been committed in \u201cthe explosion of violence in Israel<\/a> and Gaza\u201d. Meanwhile, Wall Street is hoping for an explosion in profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During third-quarter earnings calls this month, analysts from Morgan Stanley and TD Bank took note of this potential profit-making escalation in conflict and asked unusually blunt questions about the financial benefit of the war between Israel and Hamas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The death toll \u2013 which so far includes more than 8,000 Palestinians and over 1,400 Israelis \u2013 wasn\u2019t top of mind for TD Cowen\u2019s Cai von Rumohr, managing director and senior research analyst specializing in the aerospace industry. His question was about the upside for General Dynamics, an aerospace and weapons company in which TD Asset Management holds<\/a> over $16m in stock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe Biden has asked Congress for $106bn<\/a> in military and humanitarian aid for Israel and Ukraine<\/a> and humanitarian assistance for Gaza. The money could be a boon to the aerospace and weapons sector which enjoyed a 7-percentage point jump<\/a> in value in the immediate aftermath of Hamas\u2019s 7 October attack on Israel and the beginning of Israel\u2019s bombardment of Gaza in response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHamas has created additional demand, we have this $106bn request from the president,\u201d said Von Rumohr, during General Dynamics\u2019 earnings call<\/a> on 25 October. \u201cCan you give us some general color in terms of areas where you think you could see incremental acceleration in demand?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know, the Israel situation obviously is a terrible one, frankly, and one that\u2019s just evolving as we speak,\u201d responded Jason Aiken, the company\u2019s executive vice-president of technologies and chief financial officer. \u201cBut I think if you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of that, the biggest one to highlight and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That next day, Von Rumohr assigned a \u201cbuy\u201d rating<\/a> to General Dynamics\u2019 stock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morgan Stanley\u2019s head of aerospace and defense equity research, Kristine Liwag, took a similar approach to the conflict during Raytheon\u2019s 24 October earnings call<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLooking at [the White House\u2019s $106bn supplemental funding request], you\u2019ve got equipment for Ukraine, air and missile defense for Israel, and replenishment of stockpiles for both. And this seems to fit quite nicely with the Raytheon Defense portfolio,\u201d said Liwag, whose employer holds over $3bn in Raytheon stock, a 2.1% ownership share<\/a> of the weapons company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo how much of this opportunity is addressable to the company and if the dollars are appropriated, when would be the earliest you could see this convert to revenue?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greg Hayes, Raytheon\u2019s chairman and executive director, responded: \u201cI think really across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you\u2019re going to see a benefit of this restocking \u2026 on top of what we think is going to be an increase in the [Department of Defense] top line [budget].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comments are seemingly in contradiction of each<\/a>\u2002company\u2019s<\/a> \u201cstatement on human rights\u201d and explicit endorsements of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights<\/a> and UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from the callousness of casually discussing the financial benefits of far-off armed conflict, the comments raise questions about whether these major institutional shareholders of weapons stocks are abiding by their own human rights policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe exercise our influence by conducting our business operations in ways that seek to respect, protect and promote the full range of human rights such as those described in the United Nations\u2019 Universal Declaration of Human Rights,\u201d says Morgan Stanley\u2019s \u201cStatement on Human Rights<\/a>\u201d. \u201cAlthough we believe that governments around the world bear primary responsibility for safeguarding human rights, we acknowledge the corporate responsibility to respect human rights articulated in the United Nations\u2019 Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTD\u2019s commitment to respect human rights is made in accordance with the corporate responsibility to respect human rights as set out in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP),\u201d says TD\u2019s \u201cStatement on Human Rights<\/a>\u201d. \u201cSince 2018, we have been undertaking a review of current practices and procedures and continue working towards integrating the UNGP across the Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But just three days into the Israel-Hamas war, the United Nations\u2019 human rights council issued a warning<\/a> that \u201cthere is already clear evidence that war crimes may have been committed in the latest explosion of violence in Israel and Gaza, and all those who have violated international law and targeted civilians must be held accountable for their crimes, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry<\/a> on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel, said today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Commission has been collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes committed by all sides since 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched a complex attack on Israel and Israeli forces responded with airstrikes in Gaza,\u201d said the Human Rights Council, assessments shared by Amnesty<\/a> International<\/a> and Human<\/a> Rights Watch<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human rights] are clear in their expectation of companies to respect human rights throughout their value chain,\u201d said Cor Oudes, programme leader of humanitarian disarmament, business conflict and human rights at Pax for Peace, a Netherland based non-governmental organization advocating for the protection of civilians against acts of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor banks, this includes ensuring that their clients or companies they otherwise invest in do not cause or contribute to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law,\u201d said Oudes. \u201cIf a bank invests in an arms producer that supplies weapons to states which use these in serious violations of human rights or IHL, according to the UNGPs, the bank has a responsibility to act to prevent more violations as well as to mitigate the existing impact on human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the UN won\u2019t be the legal arbiter of whether US companies have participated in human rights violations, a key loophole for institutional investors and the weapons firms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Universal Declaration of Human Rights is only as good as how it\u2019s interpreted by the host government, which in this case would be the US,\u201d Shana Marshall, an expert on finance and arms trade and associate director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese analysts can feel safe in the knowledge that the US government is never going to interpret that law in such a way that they will be prevented from exporting weapons to a country that the US doesn\u2019t have an outright embargo on, which probably won\u2019t have anything to do with human rights law anyways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morgan Stanley and TD Bank did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theguardian<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United Nations has warned that there was \u201cclear evidence\u201d that war crimes may have been committed in \u201cthe explosion of violence in Israel and Gaza\u201d. Meanwhile, Wall Street is hoping for an explosion in profits. During third-quarter earnings calls this month, analysts from Morgan Stanley and TD Bank took note of this potential profit-making escalation in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":19680,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[10444,2131,2074,23774,23141,1156,5050,1385],"class_list":["post-19679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-america-2","tag-conflict","tag-economy","tag-gain","tag-hamas","tag-military","tag-profit","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19681,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19679\/revisions\/19681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}