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Twitter needs to accept a scaled-back reality

The hyped Twitter “recovery” has derailed. The company’s second-quarter financial report showed that the number of people using Twitter has stagnated and will decline, although the company said that’s at least in part because of intentional decisions to clean up its cesspool. Revenue growth, particularly in Twitter Inc’s vital US advertising market, is tepid for what was billed as a ...

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Inflation is coming thanks to Trump’s trade tariffs

Did the global economy dodge an economic bullet? The US and the European Union agreed to step back from the brink of imposing mutually punishing tariffs. The agreement — if there really is one — contemplates a future agreement to resolve trade differences. Like Brexit, this is an unformed plan to somehow resolve thorny differences at an undetermined date in ...

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Beijing towers over China’s next $9bn IPO

China Tower Corp’s Hong Kong IPO looks like a pretty straightforward affair. The business is about as vanilla as it gets: The company builds and runs towers on which telecom operators hang their transmission equipment. It collects rent in return. No need to wrestle with GMV, MAU or ARPU. There’s a reason why fund managers and index compilers treat global ...

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2014 had great GDP quarter, too. It did not last

The recent strong second-quarter gross domestic product report brings up the question of whether it can be sustained in a way it wasn’t the last time GDP growth was this robust four years ago. The economy in 2014 had some things going for it that the current economy lacks — a federal funds rate firmly anchored at zero and an ...

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RBI all set to raise interest rates to stem capital flows

Bloomberg India’s central bank is on course to raise interest rates for a second consecutive policy meeting as it takes more decisive steps to rein in inflation and stem capital outflows. With inflation running well above the central bank’s medium-term target of 4 percent — and the outlook set to worsen as oil prices stay elevated and the currency slides ...

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JPMorgan sees ‘massive amounts’ of cash feeding M&A in Nordic region

Bloomberg There’s a lot of cash swishing about in the Nordic region and that leaves plenty of potential for more mergers and acquisitions, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. “There’s massive amounts of dry powder both on the corporate side, where cash balances are very good, and on the private equity side, where we see a lot of activity,” said ...

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Santander sees rising loan growth

Bloomberg Banco Santander is riding Spain’s economic recovery and rising demand for loans, helping offset emerging market currency volatility and the UK slowdown. Net income of 1.7 billion euros ($2 billion) beat analyst’s estimates in the second quarter, with earnings up in Brazil even after the real tumbled. In Spain clients took advantage of the economic upswing to take on ...

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PBOC’s new move to boost loan growth

Bloomberg Some Chinese banks have received notice from regulators that a specific capital requirement will be eased in order to support lending, as the authorities try to mitigate increasing risks to the economy from the trade war. The People’s Bank of China told some institutions on Wednesday that the so-called “structural parameter” in the Macro-Prudential Assessment of their balance sheets ...

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Nomura profit plunges 91% in first quarter

Bloomberg Nomura Holdings Inc.’s first-quarter profit plunged to the lowest in two years as its wholesale business lost money thanks to a slump in fixed-income trading, while the domestic retail operation lost steam. Net income fell 91 percent to $47 million in the three months ended June 30 from a year earlier, Japan’s biggest brokerage said. The firm posted its ...

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BlackRock splits with Vanguard on BOJ policy meet action

Bloomberg Two of the world’s biggest money managers are diverging in their views on whether the Bank of Japan will tweak its ultra-loose monetary policy as early as next week. Japan’s central bank may surprise investors with some fine tuning of its stimulus policy when it meets on July 31, according to BlackRock Inc. Not so, said Vanguard Group Inc., ...

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