January, 2020

• 21 January

  EU gets court win in crackdown on Spanish tax breaks

  

  Bloomberg The European Union (EU) got a boost in its crackdown on tax breaks for Spanish companies buying stakes in foreign firms after EU judges said a challenge involving Banco Santander SA was inadmissible. The EU Court of Justice rejected a Spanish tax tribunal’s request for guidance on the validity of European Commission decisions that found those tax breaks violated ...

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• 21 January

  UK employment rate hits record high

  

  Bloomberg The UK labour market held up in the face of political turmoil in the three months through November, giving Bank of England (BOE) policy makers pause as they weigh whether to cut interest rates. The employment rate hit a record high after the number of people in work surged by 208,000, the most in almost a year and double ...

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• 21 January

  Artificial intelligence ‘needs to be regulated,’ says Google CEO

  

  Bloomberg Alphabet Inc’s chief executive officer urged the US and European Union to coordinate regulatory approaches on artificial intelligence, calling their alignment “critical.” In a rare public speech in Brussels at an event hosted by European economic think tank Bruegel, Sundar Pichai, who is also CEO of Google, said “there is no question in my mind that artificial intelligence needs ...

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• 21 January

  The $150m machine with $200b at stake for China

  

  Huawei Technologies Co. has become very much the US’s whipping boy in the battle to nip China’s technological ascendancy in the bud. President Donald Trump’s administration has slapped sanctions and curbs on the Shenzhen-based company and lobbied allies to do the same. Last month growing resistance against Huawei among lawmakers in Germany’s governing coalition sparked threats of retaliation from the ...

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• 21 January

  Airline industry made inequality worse

  

  With power and wealth concentration on the minds of politicians and voters in an election year, one overlooked culprit is the airline industry. Thanks in part to deregulation and consolidation of the industry during the past several decades, airlines have focused their operations in big hub airports and major coastal markets as a way of reducing excess capacity and improving ...

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• 21 January

  Sprint’s floundering stock cannot tell a lie

  Traders who make a living betting on mergers still won’t touch T-Mobile US Inc. and Sprint Corp.’s deal with a 10-foot pole. The wireless carriers may have been able to butter up two federal regulatory authorities by using the wonders of a 5G-powered America to distract from their deal’s likely competitive harm. Even so, merger-arbitrage traders live in a world ...

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• 21 January

  Fed debt is nothing to lose sleep over

  Policy makers and voters often express concern about the level of the federal deficit, which topped $1 trillion last year, and the national debt, now more than $23 trillion. But, unlike a household that owes money to a bank, the US government has the ability to tax its creditors. This power means that the federal government can afford any level ...

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• 21 January

  Private equity’s mountain of dry powder is a danger sign

  

  Investors keep flocking to private equity in Asia even though returns are declining. They should take heed: Payouts are likely to get worse from here, rather than better. The hunt for yield in a low-interest world has spurred institutional investors from China Investment Corp. to Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund to join the rush into the alternative asset class. Private ...

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• 21 January

  Monte Paschi offers the ‘comfort blanket’

  

  The troubled Italian lender Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA took another big step in its long path to redemption last week by selling subordinated debt for the second time in six months. An 8% coupon is expensive for the world’s oldest bank, but it can hardly complain given its years of troubles. Even though the yield is enticing, ...

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• 21 January

  Germany’s second economic miracle is ending

  

  The cognoscenti of international economics are once again agape, and not in a flattering way, at the budget surpluses Germany’s government keeps running, when instead it should be stimulating the economy with tax cuts and higher spending. The surplus revealed this week for 2019, at 13.5 billion euros ($15 billion), is the fifth in a row, and the biggest ever. ...

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