International News

Bloomberg Argentine Economy Minister Martin Guzman has backed the idea of a wealth tax on the country’s rich as the nation to fend off creditors and find money to help cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. The tax would affect 11,000 people with fortunes of at least $2 million, Guzman said, without specifying where that cut-off point might come. He spoke ...

Bloomberg The US will allow companies to defer paying tariffs on many imported goods for 90 days, a move aimed at freeing up cash for pandemic-hit employers while leaving punitive measures against China and other nations intact. “This will protect American jobs and help these businesses get through this time,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. The deferral ...

Bloomberg Canada says it will apply extra scrutiny to foreign investment in companies that are related to public health or that supply critical goods during the pandemic. “There are vulnerable businesses that are going to be important to our recovery who are perhaps exposed to foreign purchases,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa. “We will be strengthening our ...

Bloomberg Spain’s economy could contract this year by more than 12% in a worst-case-scenario forecast by the country’s central bank, the first official figures that spell out the potential toll of the coronavirus pandemic on the European Union’s fourth-largest economy. The economic shock could push the unemployment rate to as high as 21.7% this year, undoing gains achieved in the ...

Bloomberg Germany has pledged 2 billion euros ($2.2 billion) to help its beleaguered startups, but the policy has stalled after the country’s governmental departments failed to agree on who has to pay. More than two weeks after the aid plan has been announced, Germany’s finance and economy ministries are yet to find common ground over who is responsible for paying ...

Bloomberg The biggest US companies will slash their cash spending this year amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. “We forecast S&P 500 cash spending will decline by an annual record 33% during 2020 as firms prioritize liquidity in a worsening economic environment,” strategists led by David Kostin wrote in a ...

Bloomberg Temasek Holdings Pte denied speculation that Chief Executive Officer Ho Ching makes S$100 million ($70 million) a year. “This claim is false,” the Singapore state investor said in a rare statement addressing the pay of the top executive, who’s also Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s wife. “Furthermore, Ho Ching’s annual compensation is neither the highest within Temasek, nor is ...

Bloomberg China’s catering industry was one of the biggest drags on output in the first quarter, leading the world’s second-largest economy into its first contraction in decades as the coronavirus brought business to a near standstill. The accommodation and catering industry fell 35.3% from a year earlier, reversing a 6.2% increase in the previous quarter, the statistics bureau said in ...

Bloomberg Singapore’s exports unexpectedly surged in March from a low base in the previous year, despite disruptions to global supply chains as the coronavirus spread across the world. Non-oil domestic exports, known as NODX, grew 17.6% in March from a year ago, the highest since October 2017, according to data published by Enterprise Singapore. The median estimate in a Bloomberg ...

Bloomberg Japanese mobile carriers NTT Docomo Inc and SoftBank Corp said they will delay their launches of Apple Inc’s new iPhone SE model until May 11 instead of the scheduled April 27 amid the coronavirus outbreak. Japan’s government expanded the area covered by its state of emergency declaration to the whole nation last week and is calling on citizens to ...