February, 2020

• 22 February

  China deal to dig into US soy stocks as Trump pledges aid

  

  Bloomberg Donald Trump’s trade truce with China is expected to push American soybean stockpiles to the lowest since the trade war began. But corn stocks are going in the opposite direction, ballooning to the highest in three decades. And the president’s hints for more farmer aid could make the disconnect between the two even more pronounced. Soybean reserves will fall ...

  Read More »
• 22 February

  Google reaches settlement with states in antitrust case

  

  Bloomberg Alphabet Inc’s Google has reached a settlement with state attorneys general over the states’ use of consultants in their antitrust investigation of the internet search giant. Google in October went to court to restrict the Texas Attorney General’s office from disclosing sensitive information to consultants who have worked for competitors and other companies such as News Corp and Microsoft ...

  Read More »
• 22 February

  Amazon seeks internal Pentagon documents in JEDI contract case

  

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc has asked a court to force the government to hand over documents related to Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s decision to recuse himself from making decisions on a $10 billion cloud-services contract. In a court filing made public on, Amazon seeks a trove of documents to bolster its challenge of the Pentagon’s Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud ...

  Read More »
• 22 February

  ‘Amazon not providing data security’

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc doesn’t provide enough data security for sellers sending emails on its marketplace platform, according to a complaint filed by Noyb, a group created by Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems. Emails are routed through Amazon servers that in some cases fail to provide so-called TLS encryption, which is a standard safety practice, according to the complaint, which was ...

  Read More »
• 22 February

  EU leaders fail to strike budget deal in aftermath of Brexit

  

  Bloomberg European Union (EU) leaders failed to clinch a deal on its next long-term budget as deep divisions over spending bubbled up in the aftermath of Brexit. After a 28-hour extraordinary summit in Brussels, they conceded it was impossible to nail down a seven-year spending plan and will have to reconvene sometime before the end-2020 deadline. “Unfortunately today we’ve observed ...

  Read More »
• 22 February

  Big data won’t save you from the coronavirus

  

  How often do you see a piece of economic or financial information revised upward by 45%? And how reliable would you regard a data set that’s subject to such adjustments? This is the problem confronting epidemiologists trying to make sense of the novel coronavirus spreading from China’s Hubei province. On February 13, the tally there surged by 45% — or ...

  Read More »
• 22 February

  At last, Italy tries a $5.3bn bank deal

  

  Italian banks embarking on a round of consolidation was always a matter of when, not if. Meager profitability, a fragmented industry and a desperate need for investment are obvious ingredients for M&A. Lenders have rid themselves of most of the bad loans that crippled Italy’s banks after the financial crisis, so dealmaking should be unhindered. Intesa Sanpaolo SpA’s surprise $5.3 ...

  Read More »
• 22 February

  SoftBank’s fund wheeze is setting off new alarms

  SoftBank Group Corp. became vulnerable to activist attack by Elliott Management Corp. because of the harmful noise generated by the Japanese technology investor’s giant Vision Fund. That noise just won’t die down. A report appeared in the Financial Times that Vision Fund head Rajeev Misra is looking to raise a multi-billion dollar fund to buy listed stocks. The blueprint was ...

  Read More »
• 22 February

  Walmart Inc must prove misstep isn’t bad stumble

  Walmart Inc. has been battling to take on Amazon.com Inc., but it was weakness in old-fashioned categories of retailing, not whizzy tech, that undermined its holiday performance and prompted it to come up short of expectations for this year. And that pressure’s not going away anytime soon, considering the continued onslaught from rivals that excel at back-to-basics shopkeeping, such as ...

  Read More »
• 22 February

  Trump’s India trip: Full stadium and mostly empty promises

  

  If there’s one thing everyone knows about President Donald Trump, it’s that he loves a captive audience — the larger and more enthusiastic, the better. This is one of the many things he has in common with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On February 24, both of them will have a chance to indulge their shared passion. Trump is to ...

  Read More »