Bloomberg Broadcom Inc. shares tumbled after the chipmaker cut its full-year sales outlook, citing the impact of the trade war between China and the US. While the weaker guidance didn’t come as a shock, the scale of the reduction caught some analysts off guard, and it was seen as further diminishing the idea that semiconductor demand would rebound in the ...
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US yields can tumble to 1.75% on trade meltdown
Bloomberg Treasury 10-year yields may drop to 1.75 percent by year-end if the US-China trade war goes full throttle, says Western Asset Management. Yields may keep falling even though they have already tumbled to about 2.10 percent from a seven-year high of 3.26 percent set in October, according to portfolio manager Mark Lindbloom. The trigger: a cocktail of lower inflation, ...
Read More »UK builder Kier to cut 1,200 jobs
Bloomberg Kier Group Plc plans to cut 1,200 jobs, exit businesses and suspend dividends as the British engineering company struggles to rein in debts piled up during a rapid expansion. Chief Executive Officer Andrew Davies is pulling Kier out of homebuilding and property maintenance to focus on construction of other buildings and infrastructure such as roads and railways. The job ...
Read More »Is Iran-US tinderbox about to catch fire?
As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of “unprovoked attacks†near the Strait of Hormuz, video screens behind him showed thick black smoke billowing from the two tankers that were struck on June 13. It was the dramatic imagery that sometimes precedes armed conflict. Pompeo didn’t offer hard evidence, and Iran denied the attacks. The US response in escalating ...
Read More »Brexit, wages a poisonous mix for BOE
Three years on from the UK’s vote to quit the European Union (EU), its failure to come up with a realistic plan for how to withdraw is pretty farcical. Officials at the Bank of England aren’t laughing, though. Mark Carney, the bank’s governor, has gone slowly on raising interest rates as he waits for the fog of Brexit to clear. ...
Read More »US private equity firm KKR settles for less in Germany
Closing a leveraged buyout in Germany can be as painful as pulling teeth. That isn’tdeterring KKR & Co. as it tries to grab a stake in the country’s most influential publishing business. The US private equity firm’s 6.8 billion-euro ($7.7 billion) deal to take Axel Springer SE private with its founding family comes with some big compromises. They only highlight ...
Read More »PM Modi’s GDP numbers have done real damage
For four years, India has battled the suspicion that its new and improved GDP series is a rose-tinted view of reality. Now that Narendra Modi is prime minister for a second term, he must see that battle for what it is: a lost cause. Unlike harmless advertising puffery around a toothpaste that kills 99.9% of germs, the narrative of 7% ...
Read More »A weak euro is not Europe’s main advantage, Mr Trump
The other day, US President Donald Trump retweeted my column about overtourism in Europe. I’d simply accept the extraordinary publicity of the presidential retweet, if he hadn’t claimed in his tweet that an undervalued euro is the reason Europe faces an excess of tourists. That, in my view, is largely inaccurate; a weak euro really isn’t the story behind Europe’s ...
Read More »This Apple supplier made crucial mistake
Japan Display Inc.’s (JDI) decision to cut staff, reduce pay and take more write-offs was the inevitable result of management’s shortsighted strategy. A planned bailout by a consortium of new backers is unlikely to solve its core problems unless key changes are made. I argued in February that the company needs new leadership. On Wednesday it announced just that: President ...
Read More »Climate change is all most of us have ever known
In May, the Toronto Star launched an in-depth series on climate change in Canada, with a straightforward title: “Undeniable.†It’s an apt description of the evidence within the reporting and elsewhere in publicly available data. “Undeniable†might be a useful descriptor, but let’s frame climate change differently: how this reality manifests itself within the human experience, and how politics are ...
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