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New Delhi shoots wrong general in lost war on cash

When there’s no trick left to defend a spectacularly failed experiment, blame Raghuram Rajan. If India’s top policy think tank is to be believed, the reason economic growth faltered last year, reaching 5.6% in the June quarter after 7.6% nine months earlier, had nothing to do with the November 2016 ban on 86% of the country’s cash. The decline had ...

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Meituan’s IPO could leave investors hungry

Meituan Dianping wants to be everything to everyone: It even describes its mission as “helping people eat better, live better” in its preliminary IPO prospectus. With these broad ambitions, the Chinese food-delivery giant is sounding out investors for a valuation of $45 billion to $55 billion. Its plans to raise up to $4.5 billion in a Hong Kong IPO would ...

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Record earnings at Canadian banks no match for US tax cuts

Bloomberg Canadian banks are scoring back-to-back record earnings, beating big US lenders on profitability, productivity and dividend yields. They still can’t outperform US banks on the stock market. Toronto-Dominion Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and the nation’s other six large lenders collectively boosted profit 10 percent to a record $8.9 billion in the fiscal third quarter. Still, that’s no match ...

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Rupee woes to deepen as India braces for external headwinds

Bloomberg India’s rupee owes its tag of Asia’s worst-performing currency this year to the selloff sweeping emerging markets. There’s more pain in store from beyond its borders. While foreign currency debt has zoomed, various external vulnerability indicators paint a rather mixed picture, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s annual report. Indeed, data due as early as next week will ...

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Carney’s future at BOE gets lawmakers’ mixed reactions

Bloomberg The prospect of Bank of England (BOE) governor Mark Carney extending his term of office garnered mixed reactions from UK lawmakers. Carney told Parliament that he would be open to lengthening his tenure for a second time to help the UK’s transition out of the EU. The Financial Times reported later that he will stay until 2020 in a ...

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Westpac admits lending breaches, settles for $25 million penalty

Bloomberg Westpac Banking Corp. agreed to pay a A$35 million ($25 million) civil penalty after admitting it breached responsible-lending laws by failing to properly assess whether some customers could afford to repay their mortgages. In a settlement ahead of court, the regulator said in a statement that Westpac’s automated loan approval system had failed to use customers’ actual living expenses ...

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Russia set for rate hike as ruble revs up inflation

Bloomberg Russia’s central bank is setting the stage for an increase in interest rates as a weakening ruble fans inflation. Just five months after it stopped easing monetary policy, the Bank of Russia raised the prospect of its first hike in borrowing costs since 2014. The country’s latest bout of currency weakness is combining with a worsening outlook for inflation ...

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Germany dismisses UK demands on banks’ post-Brexit access

Bloomberg The European Union won’t rush to enhance market access for financial firms outside the bloc, a senior German official said, pushing back against key UK government demands in the Brexit negotiations. Expanding EU “equivalence” rules, which can open the single market to non-EU firms, to new areas such as banking is unlikely anytime soon, said Levin Holle, director general ...

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Norwegian braves Argentina’s meltdown to start $18 flights

Bloomberg Argentina’s peso is slumping and the economy can’t catch a break. Norwegian Air’s mostly shrugging it all off to offer plane tickets starting at $18. The company is betting that a weaker peso will attract foreigners and a recession at home will boost domestic travel, said Ole Christian Melhus, chief executive officer of the Argentine unit, in an interview. ...

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Zara sets goal to sell clothes everywhere as Amazon encroaches

Bloomberg Spain’s Inditex SA plans to make clothes from its Zara label and other brands available online anywhere in the world within two years, aiming to become one of the first truly global clothiers as Amazon.com Inc. encroaches into fashion. “We want to make our fashion collections available to all our customers, wherever they are in the world, even in ...

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