June, 2020

• 10 June

  Burundi leader dies at tail-end of 15-year rule

  

  Bloomberg Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza, whose 15-year rule was marked by political violence and upheaval that earned his country international pariah status, has died. He was 55. Nkurunziza suffered a heart attack on June 8, two days after playing a volleyball match, the government said. He was due to step down in August, after an election last month won by ...

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• 10 June

  IMF approves $5bn in aid to Ukraine

  

  Bloomberg The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) executive board approved $5 billion of aid to Ukraine, the culmination of months of talks that grew more urgent as coronavirus pandemic struck. The Washington-based lender will disburse the first $2.1 billion loan tranche immediately, according to an emailed statement. Ukraine needs money to help cover its budget deficit, which tripled as the government ...

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• 10 June

  Virus splinters global economy, exposing inequality faultlines

  

  Bloomberg The coronavirus pandemic is splintering the world economy, and the extraordinary action needed means policy makers cannot risk a premature withdrawal of lifelines to businesses and the most vulnerable people, the OECD warned. It made the grim assessment in its quarterly outlook, where it forecast a global slump of 6% this year, more than the World Bank earlier this ...

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• 10 June

  Software firm Duck Creek raises $230m ahead of IPO

  Bloomberg Duck Creek Technologies, a software provider for insurers, has raised $230 million from new and existing investors ahead of a planned initial public offering. The Boston-based company attracted Kayne Anderson Rudnick Investment Management and Whale Rock Capital Management as new investors, according to a statement reviewed by Bloomberg. The valuation of the company in the round wasn’t included in ...

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• 10 June

  Finance chiefs say EU urgently needs to bolster capital markets

  

  Bloomberg Europe needs to quickly deregulate its capital markets to encourage people to buy more stocks, according a panel of top industry executives. With massive amounts of debt being sold to counter the coronavirus recession and the European Union (EU) losing its financial hub in Brexit, the group said companies need greater access to equity investment now more than ever ...

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• 10 June

  UK’s Soho landlord loses $383m in 6 months

  Bloomberg The landlord that owns chunks of London’s trendy Soho district has written down the value of its portfolio by more than $383 million, after coronavirus forced its stores and restaurants to close. Shaftesbury Plc said its portfolio fell by 7.9% in the six months through March to 3.5 billion pounds, according to a statement on Wednesday. The company has ...

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• 10 June

  Endangered restaurants say $120b aid would pay for itself

  

  Bloomberg A trade group for independent US restaurants said that its proposal for a $120 billion industry stabilisation fund would pay for itself more than twice over as the Republican-controlled Senate signals it wants the next response to the coronavirus crisis to be more limited. The proposed fund could generate more than $270 billion in economic activity through savings of ...

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• 10 June

  Europe stocks advance, dollar drops ahead of Fed decision

  

  Bloomberg Stocks in Europe advanced along with US equity-index futures after a mixed session in Asia Wednesday as investors awaited the Federal Reserve’s next move on monetary policy. The dollar headed for a three-month low against a basket of peers. Financial services and retailers led a broad advance in the Stoxx Europe 600 index. S&P 500 futures rose after the ...

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• 10 June

  Tide is turning for HK stocks at 50% discount to S&P 500

  

  Bloomberg Amid all the doubt surrounding Hong Kong’s future as a global financial hub, one thing is certain: the city’s stock market is an enticing target for the wave of cash that’s returning to the world’s equities. Rarely has the valuation case for the city’s shares been this compelling. Investors price the world’s fourth-largest bourse like a frontier market, with ...

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• 9 June

  Covid-19: Abu Dhabi’s firm to roll out breakthrough tech for mass testing

  

  ABU DHABI / WAM Group 42, a UAE-based artificial intelligence and cloud computing company, and Oxford Nanopore Technologies, an advanced sequencing technology company based in the UK, announced on Tuesday they have developed an unprecedented population-scale technology that rapidly and accurately detects Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. The end-to-end solution will be officially launched within weeks. With ultra-high parallel ...

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