Bloomberg Twitter Inc.’s push into live video and more personalised content is finally starting to pay off, boosting revenue and profit more than projected in the first quarter by luring users and advertisers. The shares rose. Sales jumped 21 percent, the most in two years, to $664.9 million, Twitter said on Wednesday in a statement. That surpassed the average analysts’ ...
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Look out, America is going even deeper into debt
How much debt can the US government afford? Nobody knows for sure, but it’s pushing the envelope like never before — or at least more than it has since World War II. In its latest Global Fiscal Monitor report, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) offers an admonishment for the world’s developed nations: Use this period of economic growth to pay ...
Read More »Draghi should put the euro in its place
Rather than looking at what investors expect, perhaps the better question is: What does the European Central Bank (ECB) want to achieve out of its April 26 meeting? Sticking the euro in a box is the answer. Currency stability helps its cause as it manages the delicate balancing act of bringing its QE stimulus packages to a close sometime this ...
Read More »For UBS Group, the best isn’t yet to come
UBS Group AG CEO Sergio Ermotti is running out of goodies to sustain the Swiss bank’s premium valuation. After a poor end to 2017, he tried to placate shareholders with buybacks. Now, he is counting on growth at the investment bank to drive future returns. But with a blowout quarter for trading behind us, and more work to do to ...
Read More »Here’s a sure way to make Facebook, Google behave
“What happens to you here is forever,†warns O’Brien, an agent of the Thought Police, in “1984. He would’ve loved the internet. Online, everything is forever. All the sites you visit, articles you like, posts you share: They’re in the permanent file. Facebook Inc.’s most recent scandal — in which it allowed an outside company to furtively collect its users’ ...
Read More »Trump cannot make the Manafort case disappear
When August 2016 began, Paul Manafort was about 11 weeks into his job as chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign. But despite the political tumult, Manafort found time that month to meet at a swank Manhattan cigar bar with someone the FBI has suggested has ties to Russian intelligence. By the time August ended, Manafort was gone — having resigned after ...
Read More »Can Deutsche’s new CEO really wield the scalpel?
Nobody expects Deutsche Bank AG to set the world alight when it reports first-quarter results on Thursday — the lender has already warned that profit will be hit by adverse currency movements and higher funding costs. But it’s a perfect time for new CEO Christian Sewing to front-load the bad news and announce some bold decisions. That means taking the ...
Read More »The EU faces growing east-south conflict over cash
Eastern Europe has been on the receiving end of European Union largesse ever since it joined the bloc. But eastern members likely have a big fight on their hands as the bloc’s establishment attempts to link further aid to compliance with its vision of European values. There are many fault lines in Europe, but when it comes to battles over ...
Read More »Laundering scandals expose European rift on policing banks
Bloomberg Europe is struggling to agree on how to tackle money laundering in the wake of high-profile scandals in the Baltic region. Latvia, grappling with the aftermath of its third-biggest bank being closed down, is calling for a pan-European approach to fighting dubious financial flows. While it has the support of other small states, it hasn’t convinced Germany, which argues ...
Read More »StanChart top Mena bond sales arranger in a decade
Bloomberg For the first time since 2008, Standard Chartered Plc (StanChart) is topping the list of bond sales arrangers in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena). The emerging markets-focussed lender climbed four places from 2017 and has already built up a substantial lead on the competition just four months into the year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. JPMorgan ...
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