October, 2022

• 25 October

  Flair Airlines in talks to merge with former Boeing CEO’s SPAC

  

  Flair Airlines Ltd, a low-cost Canadian airline, is in talks to go public through a merger with New Vista Acquisition Corp., a blank check-firm backed by a former Boeing Co. chief executive officer. New Vista may seek to raise additional financing to support a transaction. The special purpose acquisition company is led by Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s CEO from 2015 to ...

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• 25 October

  Unilever recalls Dove, aerosol dry shampoos over cancer risk

  

  Unilever Plc recalled popular brands of aerosol dry shampoo, including Dove, after discovering they were contaminated with a chemical called benzene that can cause cancer. The recall also covers brands such as Nexxus, Suave, Tresemmé and Tigi, which makes Rockaholic and Bed Head dry shampoos, according to a notice posted on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) website. Unilever’s recall ...

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• 25 October

  Citigroup, Barclays see Indian rupee falling to 85 per dollar

  

  India’s central bank is likely to loosen its recent grip over the rupee, analysts at Citigroup Inc. and Barclays Plc said, leaving the local currency vulnerable to plumb fresh lows against the dollar. Citi expects the rupee to push to 85 to a dollar, while Barclays says that the risk of a short-term overshoot to 84-85 is high. Standard Chartered ...

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• 25 October

  HSBC added $200m to UK loan loss charges

  

  The UK’s chaotic mini-budget prompted HSBC Holdings Plc to increase its loan loss provision by $200 million in the third quarter, another sign of the economic turmoil created by the aborted fiscal statement. The lender took a $279 million charge against its UK unit in the period, according to an analyst presentation on Tuesday. That included “$200 million of additional ...

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• 25 October

  Japan’s lenders break with Wall Street by embracing hybrid work

  

  Workers at Japanese banks aren’t having to rush back to the office, unlike their counterparts on Wall Street, even as the country gradually returns to normal life after the pandemic. The nation’s three largest lenders — Mitsubishi UFJ Financial group, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial group and Mizuho Financial group  — said they are allowing more flexibility, eschewing a minimum number of ...

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• 25 October

  Sunak to struggle in fight to lift UK stocks out of doldrums

  

  Rishi Sunak might be a safe pair of hands for the UK economy, but investors don’t expect his premiership to give a significant boost to country’s beaten-down equities. While the ex-Goldman Sachs banker is set to bring an end to the kind of extreme volatility that characterised Liz Truss’s brief tenure in Downing Street, Sunak’s more prudent fiscal approach is ...

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• 25 October

  China rout puts focus on stocks with foreign holdings, says BofA

  

  A record exit by overseas investors from mainland-China equities is putting a fresh focus on stocks with high foreign ownership. Statistics on foreign ownership was the primary client query at Bank of America Corp (BofA) after a leadership reshuffle — which tightened President Xi Jinping’s grip over the country’s ruling party — spurred a historic market rout. “The number one ...

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• 25 October

  Covid variants: How worried should we be?

  

  Lisa Jarvis Some rather alarming headlines recently circulated about the newest members of the omicron family. “Nightmare Covid variant,” read one. “The most immune-evasive Covid variants yet.” Or, as one would-be pandemic influencer said in a tweet shared thousands of times: “MOTHER OF GOD… #COVID variants worse than CDC has been admitting.” Apparently, it’s spooky season for Covid variants. Or ...

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• 25 October

  Singapore Airlines not to fire pregnant flight attendants

  

  Singapore Airlines Ltd said pregnant cabin crew can remain employees, reversing a longstanding and much-criticised rule that they leave the airline. Responding to a Straits Times article, Singapore Air said pregnant cabin crew “may choose to work in a temporary ground attachment” and can resume flying duties after maternity leave. Before the new rules, which took effect on July 15, ...

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• 25 October

  Qantas Airways was 11 weeks from collapse at worst of pandemic: CEO

  

  Qantas Airways Ltd came within 11 weeks of financial collapse at the height of the pandemic when travel came to a standstill and the airline continued to haemorrhage cash, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Alan Joyce said. At a lunchtime speech in Sydney on Monday, Joyce said that in early 2020 he was receiving weekly reports from his finance team that ...

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