It’s been more than two years since Apple Inc issued revenue guidance. The iPhone maker initially blamed the Covid-19 pandemic, and later added chip shortages, for its inability to forecast the future. Yet the move is part of a worrying trend toward decreasing transparency at the world’s largest company. On January 28, 2020, just as lockdown measures were shutting parts ...
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Should Sri Lanka cancel central bank?
What was good for Sri Lanka under British colonial rule 75 years ago may be worth a try again. Or at least that’s what Mark Mobius, the former emerging markets guru at Franklin Templeton Investments, seems to be suggesting. To regain the confidence of investors, the bankrupt Indian Ocean island could consider swapping its central bank with a currency board, ...
Read More »Inflation is soaring. So where’s my pay raise?
When consumer prices began soaring last year, a trade union representing staff at the European Central Bank (ECB) demanded their wages increase in lockstep with inflation. This grassroots effort to index pay to price increases was ultimately unsuccessful, but it was incendiary stuff coming from the supposed guardians of euro-area price stability. Indexation, after all, can determine who is ...
Read More »Putin’s gas plan gives Germany bad choices
In 2018, German government officials war-gamed a massive natural-gas shortage. With the real thing looming, the lessons are sobering. Some hospitals, nursing homes and jails were forced to close; companies shut; livestock was left to die; hundreds of thousands of jobs vanished; rationing for households was imposed, according to the official account of the crisis-management exercise. In just a ...
Read More »Pop in business travel to help fuel 2022 profit: Southwest
Bloomberg Southwest Airlines Co expects a rebound in domestic travel to carry into the summer, joining rivals predicting that consumers will shrug off worries about coronavirus variants, fork over higher fares and fill planes in the coming months. Southwest maintained a plan to restore 93% of its pre-pandemic flight capacity this quarter as robust leisure demand is joined by ...
Read More »Wizz Air extends halt to Ukraine, Russia flights
Bloomberg Wizz Air Holdings Plc extended its cancellation of flights to Ukraine and Russia through the end of October as the war started by Vladimir Putin in February shows no sign of abating. The move means Eastern Europe’s biggest discount carrier will have scrapped operations to the two countries for the whole of the summer timetable, which this year ...
Read More »In sanctions hitch, EasyJet exits leases on Russia-owned jets
Bloomberg EasyJet Plc terminated rental contracts on six Airbus SE jets owned by a Russian state leasing company in a rare example of sanctions depriving a European carrier of aircraft. EasyJet cancelled the leases on the A319 narrowbodies owned by a unit of state-controlled GTLK shortly after the UK and European Union acted to punish Vladimir Putin over the invasion ...
Read More »Amazon’s Covid-era buildout proves too much as demand cools
Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc acknowledged that a hiring and warehouse-building binge during the pandemic is catching up with the company as e-commerce sales growth inevitably slows from the torrid pace of the outbreak. That reality will weigh on revenue and profit going forward as consumers return to their pre-pandemic habits and inflation may cool their spending. Fuel and labour costs are ...
Read More »Russia may need half its planes for spare parts
Bloomberg Russia may be forced to ground between half and two-thirds of its commercial aircraft by 2025 in order to cannibalise them for spare parts, Kommersant newspaper reported, citing an unidentified person at the Transport Ministry. In the ministry’s base case, at least 70% of the country’s foreign-made planes will still be flying by the end of 2025, Kommersant ...
Read More »China faces bleak holidays over ‘Covid zero’
Bloomberg Chinese holidaymakers face another holiday season ruined by virus outbreaks and controls, with the government’s stringent Covid Zero restrictions and fears of infection expected to keep many people at home during the upcoming Labor Day break. Travel was already down in March, when the biggest Covid-19 outbreak in two years prompted officials to lock down major cities like ...
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