December, 2021

• 28 December

  Asset management gets even harder

    For asset managers, next year is shaping up to be challenging, to say the least. Faster inflation will prompt central banks to slow, stop and possibly reverse their monetary support of economies, making financial markets trickier to negotiate. The pandemic is far from over. The industry will face even more pressure to allocate assets in environmentally friendly ways without ...

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• 28 December

  Old folks are too scared of inflation

    For Americans under 50, inflation is little more than a theoretical concept. But for those of us born in the late 1950s and 1960s, the inflation of the 1970s was a formative experience we’d rather not repeat. Inflation was as much a part of our childhood as Covid is for today’s kids. It was always there in the background. ...

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• 28 December

  FAA expands safety alert on 5G interference with aircraft

  

    Bloomberg US aviation regulators expanded their warning about 5G service set to launch January 5 on new frequencies, saying potential interference could have a broad impact on aircraft safety systems. The Federal Aviation Administration issued a Safety Alert for Operators warning that “a wide range” of aircraft safety devices could malfunction and laid out the process it will follow ...

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• 28 December

  Holiday sales jump 8.5% as US consumers return to retailers

  

    Bloomberg US holiday sales jumped 8.5% from last year as consumers spent more money on clothes, jewelry and electronics, a report from Mastercard SpendingPulse showed. Sales grew across the board, both in stores and online, for the holiday season defined as November 1 to December 24. Consumers started searching for gifts earlier than usual with supply chains roiling retailers ...

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• 28 December

  Japan’s retail sales rise for third month as shoppers catch up

  

    Bloomberg Japan’s retail sales increased for a third straight month, as easing virus concerns fueled spending by consumers before the emergence of the Omicron variant. Sales advanced 1.2% in November from the previous month, as shoppers spent more on clothing and motor vehicles, the industry ministry reported Monday. Economists had expected a 1.3% overall gain. While Japan’s consumption hasn’t ...

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• 28 December

  Fearing axe in 2022, CEOs sweat supply chain more than Covid

  

    Bloomberg The C-suite is a bundle of nerves this winter. A new survey shows that 72% of chief executive officers are worried about losing their jobs in 2022 because of business disruptions, tracking closely with the 94% of bosses who say their corporate models need to be overhauled within three years. “That’s eye-poppingly high,” says Simon Freakley, the CEO ...

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• 28 December

  Chinese manufacturing profits squeezed by commodity prices

  Bloomberg China’s industrial firms are doing much better this year than in 2020, but the improvement in profits is patchy, with miners and raw material providers benefiting from higher commodity prices at the expense of manufacturers. In the first 11 months of the year, industrial profits climbed 38% from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Monday. ...

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• 27 December

  Russia plans security talks with US before Nato meeting

  

    Bloomberg Russia will start talks first with the US on its demands for guarantees of an end to Nato’s eastward expansion before a proposed January 12 meeting between the military alliance and Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. “We will hold the main round of negotiations with the US which will take place immediately after the end of the ...

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• 27 December

  Israel approves plan to double Jewish settlement in Golan

  

    Bloomberg Israel’s cabinet approved a plan to double the Jewish population in the southern Golan Heights, part of a 1 billion-shekel ($317 million) program meant to cement Israeli control over the territory, captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. About half of the funds will be allocated to planning and housing, and the balance to developing transportation, ...

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• 27 December

  Taliban aims to boost exports to ease crisis as foreign aid ends

  

    Bloomberg The Taliban administration is working to boost exports to save the Afghan economy from collapse, with a government official saying international humanitarian aid alone won’t prevent the country from slipping deeper into poverty. “Humanitarian aid cannot solve Afghanistan’s economic problems. The only way to achieve economic self-sufficiency is to boost domestic products and export them abroad,” the Taliban ...

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