Bloomberg Runaway jewellers have become somewhat of a staple of news headlines out of India. But reading the small print of trade numbers may tell a new story — flight of capital. A spurt in imports of precious stones and pearls, at a time when gold imports have moderated, has raised the red flag for analysts at Credit Suisse AG, ...
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‘China’s Hawaii’ offers visa-free access to 33 more nations
Bloomberg China has extended visa-free access to Hainan for another 33 — mostly European and South American — countries, as President Xi Jinping seeks to boost the tropical province’s popularity among foreign tourists. New regulations expanding the travel privileges to 59 nations come into effect in May, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the State Immigration Administration. Tourists from ...
Read More »IBM turnaround questioned on slow growth of new businesses
Bloomberg IBM’s one-quarter growth streak is already in doubt. Shares of the technology company fell in early trading after it reported narrower profit margins and no revenue growth, excluding help from a weak US dollar. That cast a shadow over an effort to sell more-profitable cloud-based software to revive growth after five years of revenue declines. Though heading in the ...
Read More »AT&T may have an edge over US govt in court battle for Time Warner
Bloomberg AT&T Inc. and Time Warner Inc. may have gained an edge in the biggest merger trial in decades as the companies have exposed weaknesses in the Trump administration’s antitrust lawsuit to block their $85 billion merger, according to lawyers and economists following the battle. As the US rested its case in the fifth week of the trial, AT&T and ...
Read More »Facebook to start complying with EU privacy rules
Bloomberg Facebook Inc. is starting to comply with new privacy rules in Europe. And then, to get ahead of scrutiny everywhere else, the company said it will provide the same protections to the rest of its 2 billion users. Users in Europe this week will get notifications about some of the information they’re sharing, like their religion and political views, ...
Read More »UK inflation at one-year low
Bloomberg UK inflation slowed to the weakest in a year in March, raising questions about how quickly the Bank of England will increase interest rates. Consumer prices rose 2.5 percent from a year earlier, down from 2.7 percent in February, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. That’s less than economists estimated and below the BOE’s most recent forecast ...
Read More »Internet sales tax ruling divides US supreme court justices
Bloomberg US Supreme Court justices signalled they are divided about whether to let states start collecting billions of dollars in sales taxes from internet retailers that don’t currently charge tax to their customers. Hearing arguments in Washington in a South Dakota case, the justices considered overturning their 1992 ruling that made much of the inte-rnet a tax-free zone by exempting ...
Read More »Trump is a lonely trade warrior but he’s not alone
Threatening tariffs on imports from China, President Donald Trump has provoked swift vows of retaliation from Beijing, shaken financial markets, and generated great uncertainty and confusion. Long before China started to run huge trade surpluses against the US, he ranted against American trade partners. Other countries, he claimed in 1999, “can’t believe how easy it is to deal with the ...
Read More »BofA may have taken extra caution
Bank of America Corp. (BofA) CEO Brian Moynihan pledged in his recent letter to shareholders to keep the bank on the path of “growing responsibly.” The question is whether keeping Bank of America straight has narrowed its profits too much. The first quarter appeared to support that. Bank of America said that its quarterly earnings per share rose nearly 38 ...
Read More »Welcome back, sterling. Come in, sit down and stay a while
Sterling is back into its pre-Brexit referendum range versus the dollar, quite an amazing achievement from the depths of Brexit despair in late 2016. While dollar weakness has driven all the major currencies stronger, some of the fire under sterling has been driven by the Bank of England’s recent desire to raise rates. That desire, like many things in life, ...
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