April, 2020

• 16 April

  Salesforce, ANZ venture arms back Airwallex

  Bloomberg Australia’s Airwallex Cayman Ltd raised $160 million from new investors including Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd and the venture-capital arm of Salesforce.com to accelerate its expansion in global payments. The fresh round from ANZ’s venture unit and Salesforce Ventures gives Airwallex a valuation of $1.8 billion, co-founder Lucy Liu said. Other participants included existing backers DST Global, ...

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• 16 April

  Seafood market craters as restaurants shuttered globally

  

  Bloomberg Just one kilogram of freshly caught squid a day was almost enough to live on for Thai fishermen like Wisut Boonnak. Now the catch has halved in price and he’s spending more time on village duties. “It’s the biggest price drop that I can remember,” said Wisut, who’s been fishing for the past 40 years off the southern Thai ...

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• 16 April

  Top LNG buyers seek cargo delays as virus cuts demand

  

  Bloomberg The world’s top buyers of liquefied natural gas (LNG) are seeking to defer shipments as the coronavirus pandemic cripples demand and forces more of the heating and power fuel into storage that is nearing capacity. The move signals that efforts to contain the spread of the virus may impact energy consumption far into this year and possibly 2021, worsening ...

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• 16 April

  Italy’s Enel seeks 50% financial partner for Africa renewable unit

  

  Bloomberg Enel SpA is looking for a financial partner to buy as much as 50% of its African renewable business as the Italian energy giant looks to extend wind and solar power projects across the continent. The search for a company to form a joint venture started before the coronavirus outbreak stalled the regional economy and will continue regardless, a ...

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• 16 April

  US crude glut turns Canadian pipeline problem on its head

  

  Bloomberg The worldwide coronavirus pandemic that’s caused oil demand to plummet has turned the Canadian oil patch’s biggest problem on its head. Rather than having too few oil pipelines, the province now has too many. The collapse in oil demand caused by people staying home has reduced US demand for Canadian crude, leaving pipelines struggling to stay full. After more ...

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• 16 April

  Air pollution’s insidious link to Covid-19 pandemic

  

  Bloomberg Even before the pandemic struck, outdoor air pollution was linked to the deaths of as many as nine million people each year. Now two new studies show that Covid-19 patients are more likely to die if they live in regions with high levels of air pollution. Air pollution affects human health in insidious ways. The burning of fossil fuels ...

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• 16 April

  Tycoon sees Oklahoma adopting oil-output limits

  Bloomberg Continental Resources Inc founder Harold Hamm told Texas oil regulators he expects neighbouring Oklahoma to adopt crude-production limits in a bid to bolster energy prices. Hamm’s comments came during a marathon hearing of the Texas Railroad Commission on whether to enact quotas amid the worst crude-market crash on record. Oklahoma, the fourth-largest US oil-producing state, plans to consider imposing ...

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• 16 April

  IMF urging policymakers to avoid Depression-era mistake

  

  Bloomberg The International Monetary Fund (IMF) wants policy makers to avoid repeating the Depression-era mistake of ratcheting back budget deficits. Instead, it’s urging them to ramp up fiscal stimulus when the coronavirus contagion starts to abate. “Once the recovery has happened and we are past the pandemic phase, for advanced economies it would be essential to undertake a broad-based stimulus,” ...

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• 16 April

  Finland’s lockdown to decline GDP by around 2% per month

  

  Bloomberg Finland’s lockdown will cause gross domestic product (GDP) to shrink between 1.5% and 2.0% for each month that it is in place, the Finance Ministry said Thursday. The longer the restriction measures last, the slower the recovery will be, Mikko Spolander, director general of the Economics Department, told reporters in Helsinki. “The danger is that the longer the economy ...

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• 16 April

  US to buy milk, meat as part of $15.5 billion aid

  

  Bloomberg The Trump administration would like to make purchases of milk and meat products as part of a $15.5 billion initial aid package to farmers rattled by the coronavirus, said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. “We want to purchase as much of this milk, or other protein products, mutton and other products, and move them into where they can be utilised ...

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