Classic Layout

North Korean media goes crazy for Trump’s border meeting with Kim

Bloomberg North Korean state media released gushing reports of Kim Jong-un’s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) summit with President Donald Trump, as the regime sought to use another history-making meeting with the US leader to validate its policy decisions. The front page of North Korea‘s ruling party Rodong Sinmun newspaper was dominated by a seven-photo splash of Trump making the first crossing ...

Read More »

Jeremy Hunt seeks to boost credentials with no-deal Brexit plan

Bloomberg Jeremy Hunt seeks to burnish his Brexit credentials as he sets out his strategy for preparing the UK for a no-deal departure from the European Union The foreign secretary, who campaigned for the “remain” side in 2016’s referendum, will use a speech in London to lay out the plan, which includes preparing for a no-deal budget that will cut ...

Read More »

Central banks are creating a horde of zombie investors

Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, wrote a provocative op-ed in the New York Times last weekend. Titled “When Dead Companies Don’t Die,” it argues that unprecedented monetary stimulus from global central banks created a “fat and slow” world, dominated by large companies and plagued by a swarm of “zombie firms” — those that should be ...

Read More »

FedEx’s disappointments piling up

FedEx Corp. has managed to fall out of a basement window. Expectations heading into the parcel-delivery company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings were low. In the past six months, the company cut its 2019 outlook twice amid a weakening global trade backdrop; announced a series of puzzling executive departures; became a candidate for inclusion on China’s list of unreliable entities; and dropped ...

Read More »

Allergan is a $63 billion Botox job for AbbVie

When the maker of the top-selling arthritis drug says it’s buying a leader in anti-wrinkle treatments, you’d be forgiven if your initial response to the news was that it seems like a match made in heaven. But take a closer look, and AbbVie Inc.’s $63 billion purchase of Botox maker Allergan Plc isn’t such a perfect fit. AbbVie is desperate ...

Read More »

Trump’s trade truce shows Huawei was political pawn

President Donald Trump’s decision to restart sales of US technology products to Huawei Technologies Co. may ease tensions with China, and even help end the trade war. Yet as far as deals go, this is set to be one of Trump’s worst. It doesn’t stop the technology cold war underway, and weakens the US stance that Huawei isn’t just a ...

Read More »

The internet is everywhere, but internet jobs are not

The internet was supposed to render geography irrelevant. But the corporations that dominate the internet have turned out to be remarkably concentrated, geographically speaking. In internet publishing and web search portals, a somewhat ungainly but very important North American Industry Classification System category, 58 percent of all US jobs in December could be found in just five counties, and more ...

Read More »

For China, kicking a $9tn habit is a tough work

So much for deleveraging. China’s biggest shadow lenders are back. On the surface, it may look like regulators have managed to shrink the role of trust companies, after a wide-ranging, mo-nths-long crackdown on China’s financial underbelly. Assets und-er management at these lightly regulated non-bank financial firms – a hybrid of private equity, asset management and lending – posted their first ...

Read More »

What social media needs now is more humans

Rare is the week that doesn’t bring some new controversy over someone or something being banned from Twitter or Facebook for being too offensive. As regular readers know, I prefer more speech to less speech, but this column isn’t about what content rules private companies should enforce. Today I’m wearing my fair-process hat. These mighty controversies over kicking users off ...

Read More »

US stocks pare gains after record; Treasuries retreat

Bloomberg US stocks rallied to all-time highs after a trade truce with China, though gains eased after measures of manufacturing activity showed growth slowing in the world’s largest economy. Gold, the yen and Treasuries all retreated. The S&P 500 surpassed its intraday record, with chipmakers surging after President Donald Trump agreed to ease a ban on American companies supplying Chinese ...

Read More »
Send this to a friend