August, 2022

• 3 August

  Skyports wins funding from ST Engineering

  

    Bloomberg Skyports Ltd, which builds takeoff and landing sites for flying taxis, drew investment from Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd amid plans for a terminal in the city for airborne electric cabs. Aerospace company ST Engineering is the final investor in a Series B capital raise and takes the latest round of fundraising to $26.1 million, Skyports said. The first ...

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• 3 August

  British Airways stops ticket sales on some Heathrow flights

  

  Bloomberg British Airways halted ticket sales on some short-haul services out of London Heathrow airport through next Monday to make room for passengers who’ve had their flights scrapped amid capacity caps at the hub. The unit of IAG SA said the move follows Heathrow’s request for carriers to limit new bookings after introducing a limit of 100,000 daily departing customers ...

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• 3 August

  Germany’s retail sales plunge most since 1980

    Bloomberg German retail sales plummeted in June as consumers cut spending on non-essential goods to cope with record inflation. Sales were down 9.8% from the previous year, the most since 1980 — before the country’s reunification. Non-food items such as furniture and household appliances or clothing and shoes registered even steeper declines. The data add to an already strained ...

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• 3 August

  Nancy Pelosi visits Taiwan, defying Chinese warnings

  

  Bloomberg US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi became the highest-ranking American politician to visit Taiwan in 25 years, prompting China to announce military drills encircling the island. Pelosi greeted Taiwanese officials including Foreign Minister Joseph Wu on the tarmac, where she posed for photos. In a statement, she said her visit “in no way contradicts longstanding United States policy” and that ...

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• 3 August

  Putin, Erdogan to discuss Ukraine, grain on Friday, Kremlin says

  

  Bloomberg Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks Friday including on a deal reached to unblock exports of grain from Ukraine, the Kremlin said. The meeting in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi will be “a good opportunity to synchronize watches on the subject of the effectiveness of this mechanism for exporting grain from ...

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• 3 August

  Truss eyes billions by cutting civil service ‘waste’

  

  Bloomberg Liz Truss vowed to slash “waste, bureaucracy and inefficiency” in the civil service to save billions of pounds a year for the British taxpayer if she becomes UK prime minister. The foreign secretary, the front-runner in the race with Rishi Sunak to succeed Boris Johnson, said that she’ll align the pay of public sector workers to living costs in ...

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• 3 August

  Hong Kong’s Lee least popular new leader in decade, poll says

    Bloomberg Hong Kong’s John Lee drew the lowest approval rating in a decade for a new chief executive, underscoring the challenges he’ll face winning over a city that’s facing some of the world’s strictest Covid restrictions. The percentage of people expressing confidence in Lee, who took over as Hong Kong’s fifth chief executive last month, was 45%, according to ...

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• 3 August

  Russia balks at US prisoner swap offer, views it as unequal

  

  Bloomberg Moscow is leaning towards rejecting a prisoner swap unless it gets two Russians in return for the two Americans the US wants released, according to people familiar with the Kremlin’s thinking. The US has called on Russia to free WNBA player Brittney Griner and former US Marine Paul Whelan, offering to free convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout. Discussions have ...

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• 3 August

  China banks may face $350b in losses from property crisis

  

    Bloomberg China’s banks face mortgage losses of $350 billion in a worst-case scenario as confidence plunges in the nation’s property market and authorities struggle to contain deepening turmoil. A spiralling crisis of stalled projects has dented the confidence of hundreds of thousands of homebuyers, triggering a mortgage boycott across more than 90 cities and warnings of broader systemic risks. ...

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• 3 August

  Bank of England set for biggest interest rate rise in 27 years

  

  Bloomberg The Bank of England (BOE) this week is expected to push through the biggest interest-rate increase in 27 years and unveil its strategy for unwinding some of the £895 billion ($1.1 trillion) of stimulus it delivered over the past decade. The measures would accelerate a historic tightening of monetary policy to choke off the worst bout of inflation in ...

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