April, 2020

• 11 April

  After 32 years of running for president, Biden nails it

  

  Former Vice President Joe Biden has gone from what political scientist Josh Putnam has called the presumptive presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to being the just plain presumptive Democratic nominee. Bernie Sanders finally saw that there was no realistic chance of winning the nomination, and that dropping out now was the way to maximise his influence. Surely his decision to suspend ...

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• 11 April

  Tesco has every right to pay a dividend

  

  One well-known British retailer says it has noticed a marked upturn in customers saying “Thank you” to store staff since the start of the Covid-19 crisis. Investors in another — Tesco Plc — will be doing the same after it said it would pay out 635 million pounds ($783 million) in final dividends, taking its distribution for the full year ...

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• 11 April

  Germany will be a post-coronavirus winner

  

  All great economic crises pose two equally important challenges: they drain the liquidity necessary for the functioning of businesses, large and small, and burn up their equity capital, or a substantial part of it. Of the two, the former is the immediate challenge amid the coronavirus-induced lockdowns. Providing liquidity to companies is the top priority to ensure their survival. Yet ...

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• 11 April

  Apple, Google team up on Covid-19 contact-tracing tech

  

  Bloomberg Apple Inc and Google unveiled a rare partnership to add technology to their smartphone platforms that will alert users if they have come into contact with a person with Covid-19. People must opt in to the system, but it has the potential to monitor about a third of the world’s population. The technology, known as contact-tracing, is designed to ...

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• 11 April

  Apps merge as race to control deliveries heats up in LatAm

  

  Bloomberg Latin America’s delivery app wars are intensifying as Brazil’s iFood and a unit of Delivery Hero SE said they will merge operations in Colombia, setting up a battle with SoftBank-backed Rappi Inc on its home turf. Sao Paulo-based iFood and Domcilios.com, a subsidiary of Delivery Hero, said the merger will create one of the largest food delivery companies in ...

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• 11 April

  Helicopter service pivots to SUVs during NYC shutdown

  

  Bloomberg With the vast majority of flights out of New York currently canceled and citizens sheltering in place, it would seem there isn’t much use for a helicopter service that’s made a name for itself by transporting the city’s elite above Manhattan gridlock. But Blade Urban Air Mobility Inc quickly adapted to the new way of the world—both to aid ...

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• 11 April

  Alphabet’s delivery by drone unit surges

  Bloomberg Alphabet Inc’s Wing unit is seeing a dramatic increase in the number of customers using its drone delivery service in rural Virginia during the Covid-19 pandemic. Wing, which began routine deliveries under a test programme approved by the federal government last October, has added new vendors and expanded the items customers can order to better serve people during the ...

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• 11 April

  China’s bank lending surges after PBOC steps up support

  

  Bloomberg China’s bank lending and credit provision hit records in March, indicating that government and central bank efforts to boost support for the economy are having an effect. Aggregate financing increased by 5.15 trillion yuan ($732 billion) last month, compared to a median estimate of 3.14 trillion yuan. That was a record for any month in comparable data back to ...

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• 11 April

  Foreign central banks sell $21.7bn Treasuries

  

  Bloomberg Foreign official holdings of Treasuries stashed at the Federal Reserve declined $21.7 billion during the first week of April, as the economic consequences of the coronavirus roiled governments and central banks around the world. The decrease appeared in the Fed’s weekly custody data, with the latest figure indicating a drop for the week that ended April 8. That’s the ...

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• 11 April

  Canada banks approve $2bn of business loans

  

  Bloomberg Canada’s five biggest banks approved about 69,000 in loans on the opening day of the federal government’s relief program for small businesses hurt by the coronavirus pandemic. That totals $2 billion if every client took the full amount allowed under the Canada Emergency Business Account, which offers government-guaranteed loans of as much as C$40,000 that are interest-free through 2022. ...

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