June, 2020

• 21 June

  Malawi set for presidential poll re-run

  

  Bloomberg Lazarus Chakwera, a preacher who heads Malawi’s main opposition party, is seen as the front-runner heading into a court-ordered election rerun on June 23 after forming an alliance with popular vice president, Saulos Chilima. The Supreme Court of Appeal, the top judicial authority, last month upheld the Constitutional Court’s annulment of a shambolic May 2019 vote that handed President ...

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• 21 June

  UK police say stabbing attack a terror incident

  

  Bloomberg A stabbing attack in which three people died in a park in the English town of Reading is now being investigated as an act of terrorism, UK police said. The attack happened at Forbury Gardens in Reading, about 40 miles west of London. In addition to those killed, three people sustained serious injuries. Eyewitnesses told how a man approached ...

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• 21 June

  South Korea limits entry for foreigners over virus cases

  Bloomberg South Korea’s health authorities will limit the entry of foreigners from some countries where Covid-19 infections are surging through a temporary restriction on flights and visa issuances. With the exception of important business trips or visits by government officials, Korean authorities will restrict issuance of visas “as much as possible,” and put a temporary ban on non-scheduled flights from ...

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• 21 June

  German economy should have worst behind it: Weidmann

  

  Bloomberg Germany’s economy is probably past the worst of the fallout from the coronavirus, Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview. “In the last few months we’ve had the sharpest economic deterioration in the history of the republic,” FAZ cited Weidmann as saying in an excerpt of the interview. “The good news is that the low ...

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• 21 June

  Trump administration agrees to disclose details of PPP loans

  

  Bloomberg The Trump administration, following a backlash, said it would release details about companies that received loans of $150,000 or more from a coronavirus relief program for small businesses. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said last week the firms that got billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded aid wouldn’t be disclosed, sparking fury from Democrats and others. In a joint statement, the ...

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• 21 June

  UK’s Sunak considers emergency cut in VAT

  Bloomberg UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak is mulling an emergency cut to the country’s Value-Added Tax (VAT), The Sunday Times reported. Sunak has asked officials to prepare various options to lower the sales tax, including reducing the headline rate and zero rating more products for a fixed term, the report said. He could make the announcement in a ...

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• 21 June

  Europe will have a digital tax, no matter what, says Breton

  

  Bloomberg There will be a European tax on giant digital corporations, even if a current project harbored by the OECD fails, European Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said, in an interview with France Inter radio. “We’d rather do this within a global framework, as part of an OECD discussion, over the year 2020,” Breton said. He added that the US, ...

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• 21 June

  Daimler plans additional 10,000 jobs cuts

  

  Bloomberg Daimler AG’s Chief Executive Officer Ola Kaellenius plans a new cost savings program and looks to cut an additional 10,000 jobs through 2025, magazine Automobilwoche reported citing unidentified company sources. The carmaker aims to outsource information technology services and cut positions in research and development, according to the magazine. The company previously announced in November a plan to reduce ...

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• 21 June

  Wirecard, once Germany’s pride, turns national embarrassment

  

  Bloomberg The company once hyped as the future of German finance has become a symbol of national embarrassment. After promising to shake up the world of payments, Wirecard AG saw its stock collapse and its chief executive officer resign after $2.1 billion, or about a quarter of its balance sheet, went missing. That was a bombshell for Germany’s establishment after ...

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• 21 June

  Bond market eyes gathering crowds for clues on path of rates

  

  Bloomberg As social-distancing measures are relaxed across the US, Wall Street is searching in some unconventional places for clues about where interest-rate markets are headed. The rally in US Treasuries buckled to risk-on sentiment earlier this month on signs of progress in the reopening of businesses around the country and a turnaround in economic data. But interspersed with those announcements ...

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