March, 2019

• 12 March

  Sensex rises again as elections indicate Modi regaining power

  

  Bloomberg India’s benchmark equity index extended gains with the highest close in more than five months after two opinion polls showed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling coalition would be close to getting the seats needed to form a government, when election results are announced in May. The S&P BSE Sensex climbed 1.3 percent to 37,535.66 at the 3:30 p.m. close …

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• 12 March

  Fossil fuels hit as Norway set to cut oil stocks

  

  Bloomberg The decision of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund to reduce holdings in oil stocks wasn’t as far-reaching as the industry feared, but dealt a symbolic blow to fossil fuels that will reverberate for energy companies and their investors. While the divestment by Norway’s $1 trillion fund doesn’t include Big Oil, instead rooting out $7.5 billion of companies that …

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• 12 March

  Canada makes a dent in US oil reliance

  

  Bloomberg Canada’s oil producers made a small dent in their near-total dependence on the US market after a surge of shipments flowed to China and the UK last year. The holder of the world’s third-largest crude reserves sent 3.43 million barrels a day, or 96.4 percent of its oil exports, to its southern neighbour, the smallest percentage in data stretching …

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• 12 March

  Hong Kong property prices bouncing back

  

  Bloomberg Hong Kong property prices are bouncing back. Henderson Land Development Co. raised the average price for a new batch of apartments at The Vantage in Kowloon by about 10 percent, a price list shows. The move is well-founded — demand is rising with developers selling more units in the first 11 days of this month than all of February, …

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• 12 March

  London realty market stutters as Brexit woes hit dealmaking

  

  Bloomberg Property investors cut or stopped purchases of commercial property in London this year as Brexit negotiations lurched from crisis to crisis. Spending on UK offices, malls and warehouses plunged more than 40 percent in the first two months of the year to 4.3 billion pounds ($5.6 billion), according to research firm Property Data. With less than three weeks left …

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• 12 March

  Danske watchdog may bypass courts as laundering fines soar

  

  Bloomberg Denmark plans to let its financial watchdog impose fines without going via the courts, in order to speed up the process of punishing banks involved in money laundering. The decision, which still needs to be debated in the country’s parliament, is the latest step being pushed by Business Minister Rasmus Jarlov as he responds to a $230 billion dirty …

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• 12 March

  Swedish government wants bank tax that ‘really hits’ right targets

  Bloomberg Sweden’s government wants to revisit the idea of imposing a tax on the financial industry. Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson says her goal is to have a levy that singles out banks with far more precision than previous proposals. “It should include only the financial sector,” she said in an interview in Stockholm. “We want one that has a more …

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• 12 March

  Goldman’s Apple card offers big win for Georgia firm

  

  Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has picked a little-known technology firm to help handle payments for its planned credit-card partnership with Apple Inc. The bank struck a deal last year to license payments-processing software from CoreCard Software, owned by Intelligent Systems Corp., to help with its foray into the consumer-card business, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, …

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• 12 March

  Loan loophole saved new Kazakh central bank head from debt claim

  

  Bloomberg The new chief of Kazakhstan’s central bank dodged a debt claim in 2014 thanks to a legal system that’s failed to protect lenders from rampant defaults and repeated crises. In 2014, Yerbolat Dossayev and three business partners were given a reprieve on repaying 1.9 billion tenge, then worth $13 million, that they’d personally guaranteed to the central Asian country’s …

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• 12 March

  BOJ watchers see chance of additional stimulus

  

  Bloomberg An increasing number of economists see additional stimulus as the Bank of Japan’s next policy step, while they are unanimous in forecasting no change at this week’s board meeting. Some 37 percent of 46 economists surveyed by Bloomberg this month forecast the next policy change will be additional easing, a jump from 18 percent in January. All of them …

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