Bloomberg British PM Boris Johnson tweeted that he’s looking forward to releasing the Tory party’s manifesto on Sunday, less than three weeks before the country goes to the polls. Johnson said the manifesto will respect the Brexit referendum and allow the government to focus on delivering “real benefits†to the nation. The tweet followed an appearance by Johnson and the ...
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Bogota under curfew as protests spread to Colombia
Bloomberg Bogota was placed under curfew for the first time in decades as Colombia became the latest Andean nation to be convulsed by violent anti-government protests. The mayor’s office instituted a city-wide curfew, as demonstrators clashed with security forces a day after a nationwide strike. Masked youths fought with police, and there were outbreaks of looting and vandalism in many ...
Read More »Has Donald Trump’s tax ‘reform’ backfired?
The most favourable thing that can be said of President Trump’s 2017 tax cut — whose cost is reckoned at roughly $1.5 trillion over a decade — is that it disappointed. A harsher but perhaps more accurate judgment is that it flopped. It didn’t perform as advertised. This is not just a verdict on the past; it’s also a warning ...
Read More »UN should give refugees passports
The United Nations’ recent report that 200,000 Syrians have been displaced as a result of the Turkish-led military operation in the country’s northeast highlighted what many of us already knew: Syria is the worst human-rights catastrophe of the 21st century. In just the past two weeks, we have learned about more executions, beatings, and war crimes against civilians committed by ...
Read More »HSBC’s ‘last man standing’ Assaf is on his way out
Samir Assaf, the head of HSBC Holdings Plc’s investment bank, referred to himself as the “last man standing†among his generation of peers in London. Last week, it was revealed that he’ll be leaving the post. It won’t be the last big change at the giant Anglo-Asian lender. Slowing global growth, declining interest rates, trade tensions and unrest in Hong ...
Read More »Common sense wins in India’s bankruptcy case
Two- and-a-half years after the Indian central bank took the highly unusual step of directing banks to put 12 large corporate debtors into bankruptcy, the most closely watched of the “distressed dozen†cases has finally been resolved. With the Supreme Court in New Delhi clearing the decks for the sale of Essar Steel India Ltd., the Ruia family has accepted ...
Read More »The sun stops shining for Indian property mogul
Interest rates could surge, exchange rates may collapse, the sun might stop shining brightly. Every conceivable danger an investor needs to be aware of in an initial public offering is discussed in the August prospectus of Sterling and Wilson Solar Ltd., among the world’s biggest engineering contractors to solar farms. And yet, the risk that struck hapless shareholders was buried ...
Read More »HK home prices look immune to protests
Hong Kong’s protests are damping real estate activity, spurring speculation of a long-overdue tumble in the city’s notoriously expensive housing market. Prices are likely to prove more resilient than some expect. Home transactions have dropped by more than half from this year’s peak in May, before the unrest began, to 3,447 in September and 4,001 last month, figures from the ...
Read More »In the age of 5G, hottest telecom assets are towers
There are plenty of reasons why Deutsche Telekom AG and Vodafone Group Plc make for uneasy bedfellows. But if Europe’s biggest telecommunications firms can overcome their differences, they would benefit from forging a strong alliance for one of their biggest cost centers: towers. The structures on which mobile operators install their antenna have generated a flurry of dealmaking as valuations ...
Read More »Amazon is planning to open checkout-free supermarkets by 2020
Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc is preparing to open Amazon Go supermarkets and pop-up stores, an expansion of the company’s cashierless ambitions that includes the possibility of licensing the technology to other retailers. The new store formats and licensing initiative could launch as soon as the first quarter of 2020, according to a person familiar with the project. Amazon is testing a ...
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