December, 2021

• 21 December

  Electricity prices surge to record as Europe struggles to keep lights on

  

    Bloomberg Electricity prices surged to a fresh record as France scrambled to keep its lights on, sucking up supplies from the rest of Europe. France, usually an exporter of power, is boosting electricity imports and even burning fuel oil. The crunch comes after Electricite de France SA said it would halt four reactors accounting for 10% of the nation’s ...

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• 21 December

  China’s solar industry shifting away from Xinjiang gradually

  

    Bloomberg Chinese solar companies are gradually shifting the country’s solar supply chain away from Xinjiang as the US increases its scrutiny of the region. Daqo New Energy Corp, which operates a massive polysilicon factory in the western China region, announced it would build a second, larger facility in Inner Mongolia. That’s part of a broader movement. Just 15% of ...

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• 21 December

  Power crunch just made renewables stronger!

  

    A few months ago, it looked like a cascading global power crunch was about to turn back the tide of the energy transition. In China, shortages of coal drove prices of solid fuel to 1,908.20 yuan per metric ton ($299.29), leading to power cuts and industrial shutdowns as generators refused to sell fixed-tariff power at a loss. In Europe, ...

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• 21 December

  Manchin slams brakes on Ford, GM

  

  Anything with a hint of green was taking it on the chin after Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia rejected the Build Back Better Act. President Joe Biden’s signature legislative package contained roughly half a trillion dollars of support for various forms of cleantech, the biggest federal commitment to the energy transition by far. Tesla Inc, the electric-vehicle pioneer, took ...

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• 21 December

  Covid-19: We can’t go back to normal yet!

    As omicron cases rise rapidly, there are urgent questions about how aggressively we should respond. At one extreme are reactions like that of the Netherlands, which has moved into full lockdown mode to blunt the variant’s spread. Another possibility, so far the default in many parts of the US, is simply to not do very much, whether out of ...

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• 21 December

  JPMorgan Chase & Co sent the wrong emails

    Do you think JPMorgan was doing a lot of crimes in the group chat? We have no way of knowing. Last week US regulators fined JPMorgan Chase & Co a total of $200 million for violating record-keeping requirements. From the Securities and Exchange Commission’s announcement: As described in the SEC’s order, JPMS admitted that from at least January 2018 ...

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• 21 December

  Amazon rival Snapdeal reveals sales bounce before India IPO

  

    Bloomberg Snapdeal Ltd, the Indian e-commerce startup backed by SoftBank Group Corp, filed preliminary documents for an initial public offering, adding to the rush of tech companies looking to debut on the country’s exchanges amid a record-breaking stock market rally. The New Delhi-headquartered company plans to raise 12.5 billion rupees ($165 million) through the sale of new shares, according ...

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• 21 December

  Airbus sees supply squeeze on its most popular single-aisle jets

  

    Bloomberg Airlines ordering single-aisle jets from Airbus SE may have to wait as long as 2025 for deliveries due to supply constraints, the FT reported. Current delivery slots for larger orders are “by and large” around 2024 to 2025, Christian Scherer, the company’s chief commercial officer, said. “There is a supply constraint for the most desirable assets out there,” ...

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• 21 December

  European travel stocks extend 2021 losses on restrictions worry

  

    Bloomberg Europe’s travel and leisure stocks took a fresh beating amid concern about a tightening of pandemic restrictions over the key Christmas period to stem the spread of the omicron Covid-19 variant. The Stoxx Travel and Leisure index fell as much as 3.4% in early trading, the most since worries about the new strain emerged last month, with airlines ...

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• 21 December

  Target is early winner of US holiday shopping season

  

    Bloomberg Target is an early winner of the US holiday shopping season. The big-box chain increased sales approximately 10% in November, according to Bloomberg Second Measure, which analyses anonymised US consumer transactions to measure revenue. The retailer’s gains doubled the rate of top rivals Walmart and Amazon. Of course, December could be a different story with the arrival of ...

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