Bloomberg The Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s (RBNZ) new monetary policy committee with external members could begin deciding on interest rates in the second quarter of next year, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said. Legislation to enact the government’s RBNZ reforms should pass into law by April, which could allow the enlarged policy committee to begin deliberations as soon as May, ...

Bloomberg Blackstone Group LP, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, has picked banks for India’s first real estate investment trust (REIT) listing, people with knowledge of the matter said. The US company and local partner Embassy Group selected firms including Bank of America Corp., Morgan Stanley, Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., said the people. The REIT ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank (EDCB) stuck to its plan to end bond purchases as the European Union and US stepped back from a trade war andthe currency bloc’s economic expansion remained solid. The Frankfurt-based institution reiterated it will continue buying $35 billion of assets a month until the end of September, reduce the pace to 15 billion euros from ...

Bloomberg American Electric Power’s (AEP) $4.5 billion Wind Catcher project was done in by shaky economics, and may become a teaching moment for other developers planning big clean-energy projects. The company pulled the plug on what would have been the biggest-ever US wind farm. Texas regulators rejected the project because it didn’t offer enough benefits for ratepayers, and Oklahoma came ...

Bloomberg BP Plc agreed to pay $10.5 billion, its biggest acquisition in almost two decades, for most of BHP Billiton Ltd.’s onshore US oil and natural gas assets, including in the prized Permian Basin. The deal gives the London-based energy giant a position in the Permian, a swath of west Texas and New Mexico that’s the world’s fastest-growing major oil ...

Bloomberg Royal Dutch Shell Plc finally gave investors the share buybacks they’ve been demanding, even as profit fell short of expectations despite resurgent crude prices. The Anglo-Dutch energy producer said that it is starting a $25 billion share-repurchase programme, initially buying up $2 billion of stock over three months. That should soothe investors who have grown increasingly anxious about when ...

When she started learning to play chess, my younger daughter was aghast that the pieces could’t always go where she wanted them to; she still ignores, for the most part, her opponent’s moves, figuring it’s enough for a victory to make good ones of her own. For two years, UK Prime Minister Theresa May has exhibited the same behavior. She ...

Since April, the yuan has fallen by almost 8 percent against the US dollar. This has led many analysts and politicians to speculate that China is intentionally trying to devalue its currency to offset the effect of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. It almost certainly isn’t. In theory, the price of the yuan is set by a basket of more than ...

President Donald Trump promised last week that the second-quarter gross domestic product number would be unthinkable. The number was, instead, what everyone expected, and that could pose a problem. The Commerce Department reported later that the second-quarter GDP rose an annualized 4.1 percent, just slightly less than forecasts for 4.2 percent. The biggest issue is that the number indicates that ...

President Trump has threatened to take away the security clearances of former high-ranking intelligence officials who’ve criticized his policies. Intended as punishment for the likes of former FBI director James Comey, former director of national intelligence James Clapper and former CIA and NSA head Michael Hayden, the idea is petty even by this president’s standards. Fortunately, it’s also largely pointless. ...