The acute danger from Corona seems to have been aver­ted. But consis­tent chal­lenges in corpo­rate finan­cing, growth or distres­sed mergers & Acqui­si­ti­ons incre­asingly require alter­na­tive approaches.

After a year domi­na­ted by the Corona crisis in 2020, 2021 was marked by a slow­down in infec­tion, progress in vacci­na­tion and econo­mic reco­very. For exam­ple, the ifo Institute1 sees GDP growing by 3.3 percent. The econo­mic fore­cast for 2022 predicts a further increase of 4.3 percent. Howe­ver, even though the econo­mic situa­tion has eased noti­ce­ably, many deve­lo­p­ments remain uncer­tain and new risk factors have been added. For exam­ple, mate­rial shorta­ges, a lack of precur­sors and a rene­wed falte­ring of supply chains were alre­ady dampe­ning and slowing down the econo­mic reco­very. Accor­ding to the ifo, corpo­rate invest­ment will ther­e­fore increase by a modest 6.1 percent in 2021. In 2022, spen­ding is expec­ted to increase by an addi­tio­nal 4.6 percent.