March, 2020

• 7 March

  Apple encourages Silicon Valley staff to work from home

  Bloomberg Apple Inc. is encouraging employees in Silicon Valley to work from home as an “additional precaution” against the outbreak of coronavirus, joining other major technology companies, including Alphabet Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The iPhone maker has two main headquarters in Cupertino, California, — the Apple Park campus and its original Infinite Loop set of buildings — in addition to ...

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• 7 March

  Tesla defends Musk’s take-private tweet in billion-dollar lawsuit

  

  Bloomberg Elon Musk’s comments about taking Tesla Inc. private were “aspirational,” not fraudulent, the company argues in asking a judge to throw out a shareholder lawsuit over his infamous tweet from 1 1/2 years ago. Investors claim the Twitter post on August 7, 2018 — “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured” — was an intentional deception that ...

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• 7 March

  What to expect from a UK-US trade agreement

  

  Throughout the 2016 Brexit referendum campaign and at many points during the Brexit debates that followed, a free trade deal with the US was dangled by Brexiters as the prize that beckoned if only they’d hold their nerve. That prize may soon be there for the taking, but the closer it gets, the less impressive it looks. The Boris Johnson’s ...

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• 7 March

  The retail apocalypse isn’t over yet

  

  Intu Properties Plc is in an almighty pickle. The owner of the Lakeside and Trafford Centre shopping malls has said that it had been unable to raise between 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) and 1.5 billion pounds of equity. That’s not surprising. Even before the outbreak of the new coronavirus, tapping shareholders looked like a long shot. Intu has 4.5 ...

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• 7 March

  StanChart’s investors should be careful what they wish for

  Standard Chartered Plc investors should be careful what they wish for. Shares in the emerging markets lender rose on March 3 after Bloomberg News reported that Chairman Jose Vinals has informally approached banking executives to gauge interest in replacing Chief Executive Officer Bill Winters, who’s about to complete five years at the Asia-focused bank. StanChart responded to the story by ...

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• 7 March

  China gives global miners an African headache

  China is poised to let some of its biggest state-owned entities help develop a giant West African iron-ore deposit that’s been tantalizingly promising and painfully problematic for two decades. Whatever happens next, this watershed moment for the steelmaking commodity is bad news for big producers, particularly Rio Tinto Group. The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission is actively pushing forward ...

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• 7 March

  Be prepare for pandemics. They’ll keep coming

  

  When it comes to infectious disease outbreaks, we just haven’t learned. It’s not as if we weren’t warned. Last year, a report by the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, a body put together by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank Group, said that there was “a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a ...

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• 7 March

  Italy’s billionaire family gets another windfall

  

  A good deal becomes a great deal in a market that has suddenly turned. The Agnelli family’s agreement to sell PartnerRe Ltd. to French insurer Covea for $9 billion may fall short of what investors were hoping for last month. But to ink an all-cash disposal at this price is some achievement — even if the buyer is rich and ...

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• 7 March

  Hong Kong’s ‘helicopter money’ struggles for lift

  

  If you’re raining cash on people and want them to spend it, you have to convince them that the benevolence is being financed by printing money. Nobody wants to worry about being taxed more in the future. These things are going to be problematic for Hong Kong Financial Secretary (HJFS) Paul Chan. He plans to give away HK$10,000 to every ...

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• 7 March

  Smartphone supplies may soon run out

  

  Bloomberg As Chinese factories hit by the coronavirus look to restart production, the pain is only beginning for carriers that rely on steady shipments of Asian smartphones. AT&T Inc is bracing for handset shortages across the US. A carrier in the UK and one in France are already dealing with supply disruption and could run out of some popular models, ...

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