December, 2019

• 22 December

  ‘Blocking T-Mobile, Sprint deal would harm consumers’

  

  Bloomberg The Trump administration came to the defense of T-Mobile US Inc in its fight to buy Sprint Corp, telling a judge overseeing an antitrust lawsuit brought by several states that blocking the $26.5 billion merger would harm consumers. The Justice Department’s antitrust division and the independent Federal Communications Commission said in a joint court filing that their approval of ...

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• 22 December

  Google fined $167mn in France amid crackdown on online advertisement

  

  Bloomberg Google was fined 150 million euros ($167 million) in a French antitrust case involving online advertising as regulators throughout Europe criticise the tech giant’s business practices. The French authority found Google abused its dominant position in search when it set “opaque and difficult to understand operating rules” for its Google Ads advertising platform that it applied unfairly and randomly. ...

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• 22 December

  Apple secrets ‘thief’ can’t shed bracelet

  

  Bloomberg A US judge decided it’s too risky to let an engineer stop wearing a device that tracks his whereabouts while he awaits trial on charges he stole trade secrets from Apple Inc’s autonomous-driving project before taking a new job in China. But, in a setback for federal prosecutors, the judge said in a separate ruling that electronic monitoring is ...

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• 22 December

  Year’s best US IPO is a little-known biotech with 420% surge

  

  Bloomberg Karuna Therapeutics Inc may not be the year’s best-known initial public offering, taking a back seat to names like Beyond Meat Inc and Uber Technologies Inc. But for those on the hunt for generous returns, early bets on the mid-cap drugmaker paid off handsomely. Thanks to some positive study results in November, Karuna is 2019’s best-performing US IPO. Early ...

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• 22 December

  France’s pension riots are a warning to world

  

  When it comes to retirement, France is like other countries, only more so: Everything about its system is untenable. It’s untenable that it has 42 separate public pension schemes — one for train drivers, another for opera singers, and so on. It’s untenable that the French think they have a God-given right to retire at 62 or even earlier. And ...

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• 22 December

  UK PM has a Bank of England problem

  

  After a landslide victory in the UK general election, Boris Johnson has many difficult choices ahead — not least on Brexit. One imminent personnel decision, however, will reveal a lot about whether Britain still wants to play in the big league globally. Johnson’s government is about to pick a new governor for the Bank of England, as Mark Carney’s term ...

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• 22 December

  DuPont’s breakups only lead to more breakups

  Round and round the DuPont merry-go-round of financial engineering we go. The chemicals giant agreed on Sunday to sell its nutrition and biosciences division to International Flavours & Fragrances Inc. via a tax-friendly Reverse Morris Trust transaction that values the business at about $26 billion. DuPont de Nemours Inc. will receive a one-time $7.3 billion cash payment and its shareholders ...

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• 22 December

  US-China deal will be a short-term truce

  There are times, including in armed conflict, when adversaries see it in their own interests to opt for a truce and sell it to the outside world as a steppingstone to a comprehensive peace. But both sides know it will be only a prelude to renewed tensions down the road. This could well be the best way to think of ...

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• 22 December

  Indian court turns back the clock on Tata coup

  

  How do you unscramble an egg called Tata Sons? The second law of thermodynamics says orderly things gradually turn more chaotic, and there’s no going back, no separating yolks from whites. But the appeals judge of India’s corporate law arbiter thinks he can reverse time. Or so it would appear from his order declaring that Cyrus Mistry, deposed three years ...

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• 22 December

  For FedEx, it could always get worse

  

  It can always get worse for FedEx Corp. Back in June, I wrote that the parcel-delivery company had managed to fall out of a basement window when it issued fiscal 2020 guidance that fell well short of already depressed expectations. Two guidance cuts later, it seems we’ve sunk below the foundation and are in the dirt with the worms. The ...

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