December, 2019

• 23 December

  Tesco suspends Chinese card maker on forced labour row

  

  Bloomberg UK grocery giant Tesco Plc suspended its supply of Christmas cards from a Chinese factory and said it was investigating a newspaper report that prison labour was used in their production. All the cards produced by the factory have been withdrawn from sale, Tesco said in a statement. If the investigation shows a breach of the company’s rule against ...

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• 23 December

  Atlantia, Italy government to lock horns

  

  Bloomberg The Italian government is on the verge of outright battle with the company that operates more than half of the nation’s run-down toll roads. After Giuseppe Conte’s administration provisionally approved rules on the revocation of highway concessions, Autostrade per L’Italia said lthey appeared “unconstitutional and contrary to European norms.” The company, controlled by Atlantia SpA, whose largest investor is ...

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• 23 December

  Germany expects gas pipeline delay before completion

  

  Bloomberg The Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline should be completed in the second half of next year, despite the US sanctions that prompted one of the companies involved to halt operations, although costs will rise, a senior German official said. Switzerland’s AllSeas Group SA removed vessels that were laying the last section of the pipeline connecting Russia with Germany, which ...

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• 23 December

  Alphabet’s Pichai awarded $242mn pay package

  Bloomberg Sundar Pichai is getting a hefty pay raise. The new Alphabet Inc. chief executive officer (CEO) will receive $240 million in stock awards over the next three years if he hits all of his performance targets, as well as a $2 million annual salary beginning in 2020, the firm said in a filing. If Alphabet shares outperform the S&P ...

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• 23 December

  UK productivity malaise named country’s ‘statistics of the decade’

  

  Bloomberg The UK’s dismal productivity performance since the financial crisis has been named the country’s “statistics of the decade” by the Royal Statistical Society. The society chose “0.3%” — the estimated average annual increase in productivity in the past 10 years. That compares with the 2% average increase in hourly output in the years before 2008. The performance, the worst ...

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• 23 December

  Macron isn’t Gaullist. He’s just angry at Germany

  

  It’s become fashionable of late in central Europe to accuse French President Emmanuel Macron of being a “neo-Gaullist” who touts the cause of “European sovereignty” as a cover for expanding French power, cozying up to Russia and keeping the US at bay. Worse, he’s undiplomatic about it all, arrogant, “Jupiterian.” This interpretation may be understandable for the Poles and Balts. ...

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• 23 December

  Japanese tech needs a little hostility

  

  I’m not selling,” says the chairman of one of Japan’s biggest technology companies. Let me grab some popcorn and a ringside seat for what I hope will be a hotly contested bidding war. Japan’s tech sector is ripe for further mergers and acquisitions. But the rarity of hostile takeovers means most deals feel like they’ve been hammered out over a ...

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• 23 December

  Riksbank says enough is enough on negative rates

  Most economists and market participants don’t usually spend much time looking at Swedish monetary policy. Today should be different given the decision by the Riksbank — the country’s central bank and the world’s oldest — to part ways with its peers in advanced countries by raising interest rates because of worries about the collateral damage and unintended consequences of an ...

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• 23 December

  Trump’s economy had a good year, even if he didn’t

  From a political standpoint, 2019 will be remembered as the year President Donald Trump got impeached. From an economic standpoint, however, the year has turned out about as well as he could have hoped for. After being effectively flat since the middle of 2018, the stock market has risen to record highs over the last several months. That performance is ...

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• 23 December

  As India’s protests swell, what is Modi’s endgame?

  

  Protests have broken out across India, a few of them violent, against a new law that fast-tracks citizenship for non-Muslim migrants from three majority- Muslim countries. In the northeastern state of Assam, where migration has long been a major political issue, four protesters were killed when security forces opened fire. In both the capital of Delhi and the town of ...

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