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Europe’s populist godfather ‘gets a slap’

Bloomberg After Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was castigated in the European Parliament this week over what he calls his “illiberal democracy,” the very public rebuke was hailed as a breakthrough for Europe. For opponents of the continent’s embrace of populism, finally there was a united show of strength against a leader who has railed against the European Union’s core, ...

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Lula’s ‘pick’ jumps in presidential poll

Bloomberg Leftist presidential candidate Fernando Haddad jumped in the first Datafolha opinion poll published since he officially replaced ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as the Workers’ Party candidate on Tuesday. In the poll published on Friday evening Haddad rose to 13 percent of vote intentions, up from 9 percent in the last poll conducted on September 10. Far-right ex-Army ...

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Donald Trump’s economic record is yet to be written

President Donald Trump claimed to have a “magic wand” that allowed him to push the economy’s growth rate above an annual rate of 4 percent in 2018’s second quarter. This is one of the president’s more colorful public statements taking credit for the economy’s performance. Such statements are as common as they are overstated. Trump isn’t alone in exaggerating the ...

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India’s shadow-bank bust has a Lehman echo

India is marking the 10th anniversary of the 2008 global financial crisis with its own mini-Lehman moment. True to script, ratings companies have belatedly realised that the IL&FS Group — Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. and its associates — is woefully short of liquidity, with about $500 million in repayments coming due in the second half of its fiscal ...

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A $100 million haircut for the buyout crowd

It’s rare to see a deal suffering a price cut after it’s been signed – even rarer when there’s a big equity fundraising on the side. Last week, private equity firm Advent International Plc agreed a maximum 17 percent snip to the price of Mondo Minerals BV, the Dutch talc producer it agreed to sell to British chemicals group Elementis ...

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Why China’s fracking hopes may hit the rocks

Could China’s oil and gas industry be on the brink of a revolution? That’s one interpretation of the government’s shakeup of regulations on petroleum production this month. The introduction of drill-it-or-lose-it rules and a possible extension of subsidies for unconventional gas output could end up dismembering sprawling industry leader PetroChina Co. and creating a new sector of independent upstream producers ...

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China’s imperial growth delusion just won’t die

The big state-owned Chinese enterprise is back. But this time, it isn’t looking sturdy enough to prop up the economy. As growth stumbles, Beijing is falling back on a tried and trusted solution: using large, government-backed companies to spur activity. That’s squeezing out private and small firms. The economy certainly merits concern. Trade frictions and Beijing’s crackdown on the underbelly ...

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Apple’s ‘death blow’ to phone carriers

Each new iPhone is usually good news for mobile network operators. The latest Apple Inc. device always comes with upgrades that make it easier to play games, watch films and download reams of data. More data means bigger phone bills. There’s a chance, though, that the arrival of the next generation of iPhones might not be so welcome. That’s because ...

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Bernie Sanders picks wrong kind of fight with Amazon

US Senator Bernie Sanders, a leader of the democratic socialist movement, is introducing a bill designed to force companies to pay their workers higher wages. The bill is being touted as an attack on Amazon.com Inc. — its name is the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act, which spells out ‘Stop BEZOS.’ That would be Amazon chief Jeff ...

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Danske CEO Borgen given 33% chance of surviving ‘scandal’

Bloomberg Analysts covering Danske Bank A/S see a 33 percent chance that Chief Executive Officer Thomas Borgen will continue in his role through 2018. That probability falls to 25 percent when the same analysts were asked how likely it is that Borgen, 54, will still be running Denmark’s biggest bank in 2019. The Bloomberg survey is based on responses from ...

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