December, 2019

• 15 December

  Just Eat investors deserve a bigger slice of the pie

  

  Prosus NV’s latest bid to acquire food delivery specialist Just Eat Plc was still little more than an appetizer. The Amsterdam-based technology investment firm raised its offer a measly 4.2% to 740 pence-per-share, while lowering the acceptance threshold to 50%. It had little alternative but to increase the value of its proposal: the recent recovery in shares of counterbidder Takeaway.com ...

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• 15 December

  What Boris Johnson’s win means for markets

  Sterling has punched up to new highs for the year on the back of a comprehensive election victory for Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party. With the parliamentary handbrake on Johnson’s Brexit deal now released — and the trouncing of Jeremy Corbyn’s high-taxing, business-baiting Labour Party delivered with great force — we should see sustained pound gains. Nevertheless, as I outlined earlier, ...

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• 15 December

  Seven ways economics can heal itself in the next year

  

  Economics changed a lot in the 2010s, mostly in good and healthy ways. But much remains to be done in terms of the discipline’s public image, the reliability of its methods and the success of its policy recommendations. Here are a few ways that economics should strive to change itself in the 2020s: Reform Economics Education Economic research has become ...

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• 15 December

  Online shopping is growing, but isn’t creating more jobs

  

  This has not been a great century for working in retail. The sector, which added about 5 million jobs from 1980 through the end of 2000, has added only 416,100 since. Since January 2017, retailers have shed 145,200 jobs even as overall employment growth has remained strong. The obvious explanation here is the rise of online shopping. Nonstore retailers such ...

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• 15 December

  Boeing’s timeline on 737 Max return foiled again

  

  As another deadline for the return of Boeing Co.’s troubled 737 Max slips out of reach, the aerospace company doesn’t appear to have any better handle on its messaging now than it did when this crisis started more than a year ago. Federal Aviation Administration Administrator (FAA) Stephen Dickson told CNBC that the agency won’t complete the necessary approvals for ...

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• 15 December

  Southwest Airlines plans to get 737 Max back in sky

  

  Bloomberg Worsening tensions between Boeing Co. and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) threaten new delays in the return of the 737 Max. But even after regulators sign off, airlines will still have weeks of work before passengers fly on the beleaguered plane. Southwest Airlines Co. is anticipating a month or more of preparations after the Max wins approval to fly ...

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• 15 December

  Boeing skips bid on $85 billion ICBM

  

  Bloomberg Boeing Co. said it won’t compete for the Pentagon’s program to develop and procure the next-generation intercontinental ballistic missile, (ICBM) leaving Northrop Grumman Corp. as the sole bidder for a project valued at almost $85 billion. The announcement final Boeing’s previous indications that it wouldn’t bid on the program to replace aging Minuteman III ICBMs because it views the ...

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• 15 December

  Boeing CEO chastised by FAA as tensions risk 737 Max delay

  

  Bloomberg The US’s top aviation regulator took Boeing Co.’s chief to the woodshed in a sign that relations between the two sides have deteriorated and further delays in the return to service of the planemaker’s best-selling jet are likely. In an unusual public admonishment, Federal Aviation Administration head Steve Dickson presented Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg and Executive Vice ...

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• 15 December

  EHang ends trading debut down a penny

  

  Bloomberg EHang Holdings Ltd., one of several companies seeking to commercialise autonomous taxi aircraft, closed its first day of trading in the US with its shares down one cent from their price in its US initial public offering. The Guangzhou, China-based company raised $40 million, pricing 3.2 million American depositary shares at the bottom of its marketed range of $12.50 ...

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• 15 December

  ‘Hydraulic issue’ forces turnaround of Qantas flight

  

  Bloomberg A Qantas Airways Ltd. flight was evacuated early Sunday after the plane turned back shortly after takeoff because of an hydraulic issue. Flight QF575, which departed Sydney for Perth at 8:25 am local time, returned to make a non-emergency landing, the airline said in a statement on its website. “Once back at the gate, the captain made the decision ...

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