Allianz CEO: Vast COVID-19 Cost Will Anger Many Ordinary People | Investing News
By Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton and Paul Sandle
LONDON (Reuters) – Allianz
CEO Oliver Baete said on Tuesday that European governments needed to be careful about spending record amounts on the COVID-19 crisis as many ordinary people would be angry when they were handed such a vast bill.
The coronavirus pandemic has prompted a debt-fuelled spending splurge by governments across the world as lockdowns batter economies, shred millions of jobs and push whole sectors towards collapse.
The boss of Allianz, which has 2.3 trillion euros under management, said that there were a lot of “zombie” companies being kept afloat with government money though many private households were more resilient than some thought.
Many ordinary people, Baete said, were clearly smarter than the political classes who were spending record amounts of money – an issue that he said could one day hurt social cohesion.
“Our people are apparently much smarter than