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Bloomberg The coronavirus outbreak will reduce Japanese automakers’ combined operating profit by 38% this fiscal year, but the manufacturers may rebound faster than they did after the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc said. Demand could “recover relatively quickly” once the pandemic nears an end, Kota Yuzawa and other analysts wrote in ...

Bloomberg China has started the process of potentially merging its two biggest brokerage firms to create a company that can better compete with the global investment banks as the country opens up its financial markets, according to people familiar with the matter. Citic Securities Co and CSC Financial Co, along with their government shareholders Citic Group and Central Huijin Investment ...

Bloomberg The Philippines is allowing health workers with existing overseas contracts to leave, relaxing an order earlier this month to keep them in the country to reinforce the healthcare system amid the pandemic. Future applications for healthcare jobs abroad are “frozen until further notice,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin, who called the ban unconstitutional, said. President Rodrigo Duterte said that ...

Bloomberg Russia’s deepening economic crisis is on the verge of spilling into some of the most remittance-dependent economies in the world. Migrant workers from the former-Soviet Union send $13 billion home each year from Russia, where they are allowed to work visa-free. But now that money is starting to dry up due to lockdowns in Moscow and St. Petersburg that ...

Bloomberg Europe is heading for a double-digit slump in first half of 2020 amid widespread lockdowns to stem the spread of the coronavirus, according to economists. Bloomberg’s monthly survey puts the contraction in the euro area at more than 10% in the January-June period, with most of the hit — 8.3% — in the second quarter. Even with an expected ...

Bloomberg The US federal budget deficit is on track to exceed $3.8 trillion this year even if Congress doesn’t enact any more stimulus spending, and the nation’s debt will rise to levels not seen since the country emerged from World War II, a non-partisan budget watchdog estimated. The projection by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget would put the ...

Bloomberg The French government was forced to revise its economic and financial forecasts for the second time in less than a week after President Emmanuel Macron extended the lockdown to combat the coronavirus. France will base an emergency budget on economic output contracting 8% this year, instead of 6% as it had planned last week. Extra spending to support companies ...

Bloomberg Brazil’s economic team wants to adopt a flexible fiscal target for 2021 as uncertainties caused by the novel coronavirus make it difficult to estimate the impact of the crisis, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter. The government has until April 15 to send a bill to Congress with forecasts for next year. The bill has ...

Bloomberg JBS SA, the world’s top meat company, will shutter its beef facility in Greeley, Colorado, through April 24 amid an outbreak of the coronavirus among plant employees and neighboring communities. The Greeley facility will wind down operations over the next two days with a diminished staff to ensure existing product in the facility can be used to support food ...

Bloomberg Now Germany is deploying its financial firepower to fight the coronavirus crisis, convincing the country that it was wrong to shun budget deficits for many years just got even harder. The government of Europe’s biggest economy has long faced calls by officials from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB), to the US administration of ...