December, 2018

• 25 December

  Currency strategists, traders differ on future of euro in 2019

  

  Bloomberg Currency strategists are convinced that 2019 will be the year of the euro. Money managers and traders aren’t buying it. Morgan Stanley, Credit Agricole SA and Toronto Dominion Bank are all calling for the common currency to surge next year as investors shift focus away from an overvalued dollar. That’s not a view shared by Janus Henderson Group Plc ...

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• 25 December

  Wells Fargo cuts estimates for stocks

  Bloomberg Wells Fargo cut estimates for stocks next year on concern the Federal Reserve is making a policy mistake that will throttle economic growth. Chris Harvey, head of equity strategy at the bank, cut his year-end target for the S&P 500 Index to 2,665 from 3,079. While new forecast represents a 10 percent gain from current levels, he replaced Michael ...

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• 25 December

  PBOC’s new lending facility echoes earlier programmes by ECB, BOJ

  

  Bloomberg China’s central bank reached into the toolkit of its peers around the world, announcing a new facility to encourage bank lending to companies that looks very similar to what others have done. The People’s Bank of China is trying to balance competing demands of a debt crackdown and ensuring that banks lend to support growth. The clampdown has made ...

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• 25 December

  Year-end inflation surge new headache for Russia

  Bloomberg The latest data on Russian inflation are sending up warning signals that the first few months of 2019 could be even more hazardous than most economists had predicted. The latest weekly numbers indicate that Russia might end up starting next year with price growth around the central bank’s worst-case forecast of 4.2 percent, according to economists at ING Groep ...

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• 25 December

  Holiday shopping roars to a close amid US shutdown

  

  Bloomberg “Sell” may be the chorus on Wall Street, but optimistic shoppers looking to fill the empty space under the country’s Christmas trees were out in full force during the season’s final shopping weekend. With Christmas, Americans streamed into brick-and-mortar stores on Saturday and Sunday looking for deals. The International Council of Shopping Centers predicted heading into the weekend that ...

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• 25 December

  Nike shares fall the most since October

  

  Bloomberg Nike Inc. shares fell the most in more than two months, erasing much of the gain that followed strong earnings results. The world’s biggest sports apparel and footwear company tumbled 5.9 percent to $68.10 in New York, the biggest loss since October 10. The drop was likely a product of the current market, where investors are making emotional decisions ...

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• 25 December

  Pandora spent 2018 purging its top ranks

  

  Bloomberg Pandora A/S has spent 2018 purging its upper ranks, including getting rid of its chief executive and its chief financial officer. The question now is what’s in store for its board, which oversaw an abysmal year in 2018 as shareholders in the Danish jewellery maker suffered a 61 percent slump in value, the worst in seven years. The company’s ...

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• 25 December

  Unilever takes over Vegetarian Butcher

  

  Bloomberg Unilever is acquiring The Vegetarian Butcher, a Dutch maker of plant-based meat substitutes, as part of an ambition to expand its foothold in foods that are healthier and have a lower environmental impact. In taking over the business, the maker of Dove soap and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is “responding to the growing trend among consumers to increasingly ...

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• 25 December

  Anti-drone tests failure exposes US airport vulnerability

  

  Bloomberg US airports may be just as vulnerable as London’s Gatwick airport to the kind of illegal drone incursions that shut down the UK’s second-busiest hub last week. Counter-drone technology performed so poorly in US government tests in recent years that the systems couldn’t reliably identify rogue unmanned aircraft, casting doubts on whether there’s a viable short-term solution to the ...

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• 24 December

  UAE conventional banks’ assets hit AED2.275trn

  ABU DHABI / WAM The assets of UAE conventional banks (CB) amounted to around AED2.275 trillion, accounting for 79.7 percent of total banking assets by the end of November 2018, with Sharia-compliant banks accounting for 20.3 percent of total banking assets, according to statistics released on Monday by the Central Bank of UAE. The total assets of CB increased by ...

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