January, 2020

• 26 January

  EnCap taps $6b for shale drilling

  

  Bloomberg EnCap Investments LP plans to use a $6 billion war chest to drill oil and natural gas wells, now that dwindling investor interest has made it tougher for private equity players to offload shale assets. The energy-focussed firm sees “robust drilling economics” in many parts of the US and is running 23 rigs across its portfolio companies, according to ...

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• 26 January

  Barnier pledges to work ‘night and day’ to get deal with UK

  

  Bloomberg The European Union’s (EU) chief negotiator for a post-Brexit trade deal said he’ll work “night and day” for an agreement, though the UK‘s departure will have “innumerable and lasting consequences.” There is a risk the two sides will fail to get a trade agreement by the December 31 deadline and the UK crashes out of the bloc, Michel Barnier ...

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• 26 January

  Google, Apple clash over security flaws in Safari browser

  

  Bloomberg Google engineers said a tool Apple Inc developed to help users avoid web tracking is fundamentally flawed and creates more problems than it solves. The Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature on Apple’s Safari web browser, which is meant to block tracking software used by digital advertisers, can be abused to do the exact opposite, according to a paper released by ...

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• 26 January

  US faces new tech-tax threat in Europe

  

  Bloomberg Having just persuaded France to hold off on a digital tax that would hurt its biggest technology firms, the US is facing a similar threat from another part of Europe. The Czech Republic is debating plans to impose one of the world’s highest levies on global internet companies — albeit as a stop-gap measure — brushing aside possible US ...

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• 26 January

  Uber’s London drivers to get discounted Nissans

  

  Bloomberg A year ago, Uber Technologies Inc hiked the price of rides in London and placed the surcharges into a fund that would help drivers switch to electric vehicles. Uber said drivers would be able to start tapping into that fund in the form of discounts on electric cars made by Nissan Motor Co. The two companies agreed to offer ...

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• 26 January

  VW CEO confident he can catch Tesla in e-car race

  

  Bloomberg Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess is preparing to muscle Elon Musk out of the electric-car lead. While Tesla Inc is paving the way in sustainable mobility, the world’s biggest automaker is buying software companies and ramping up investments in electric vehicles and battery cells, Diess said at World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It’s an open race,” ...

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• 26 January

  Impeachment can bring clarity in troubled times

  

  Since Watergate, presidents and their aides have warned that impeachment is destabilising to foreign policy. But history suggests otherwise. Presidential scandals create uncertainty abroad, but the impeachment process itself seems to bring clarity and resolution. Keep this lesson in mind as the Senate begins its trial of Donald Trump. The president’s advocates will argue (as he himself has already) that ...

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• 26 January

  UBS pushes into some risky territory

  

  Sergio Ermotti is facing a painful reality. For the third time in three years, UBS Group AG’s chief executive officer is resetting his ambitions for the world’s biggest wealth manager. A big fine in France is clouding the outlook for investor returns because it will make payouts uncertain. The pressure on profit margins is forcing the $2.6 trillion manager to ...

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• 26 January

  Bayer looks well beyond its $10 billion roundup payout

  

  Investors aren’t waiting for a definitive deal to end the mass of lawsuits against Bayer AG before snapping up the shares. The German life sciences group’s 75 billion euro ($83 billion) market value is up some 26 billion euros in seven months on hopes that thousands of claims related to its glyphosate-based Roundup weedkiller, accused of causing cancer, might be ...

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• 26 January

  Celebrate global cooling and fix global warming

  Since the 19th century, temperatures have been falling. I was as surprised as you. As it turns out, this isn’t about the climate for once, but about human body temperatures. On average, millennials in the US today run 1.06 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than Americans did in the 1800s, if they’re male, and 0.58 F cooler if they’re female. The reason ...

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