November, 2019

• 25 November

  Hong Kong doubts China to soften stance after election shock

  

  Bloomberg In early June, chief executive Carrie Lam kicked off unprecedented chaos when she dismissed enormous crowds of Hong Kongers who marched peacefully to oppose legislation allowing extraditions to China. The masses again spoke clearly and peacefully — this time giving 85% of 452 District Council seats to pro-democracy candidates, a swing of more than 50 percentage points. Nearly 3 ...

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• 25 November

  President Trump is now sabotaging his military

  

  Navy Secretary Richard Spencer was travelling in California on March 30 when he received a 4 am phone call from President Trump. The president demanded that the Navy release from the brig a SEAL named Eddie Gallagher, who was awaiting trial for allegedly murdering an IS detainee in Iraq in 2017. “Get him out!” Trump told Spencer, who was visiting ...

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• 25 November

  German cities aren’t ready for future

  

  Now that Germany has dodged a recession, political decisions on fiscal stimulus have been postponed. Yet the country’s employers and labor unions are still demanding an infrastructure investment program worth at least 450 billion euros over 10 years, not to give an immediate boost to growth but to keep the country competitive in the future. The World Economic Forum (WEF) ...

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• 25 November

  ECB issues a mea culpa in wake of Woodford, H2O

  In a rare bout of introspection, the European Central Bank has conceded that it’s partly to blame for creating the landscape that led to the misadventures in illiquidity that undid Neil Woodford and prompted investors to pull billions of dollars out of GAM Holding AG and H2O Asset Management. It’s right to be worried about asset managers stocking up on ...

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• 25 November

  Alibaba’s HK share sale presents a $43b dilemma

  After its $11.2 billion Hong Kong share sale, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will be sitting on $43 billion in cash. That sounds like a great problem to have. Only one publicly listed, non-financial company has more: Apple Inc., at $49 billion. Then you realise that management literally has more money than it knows what to do with. Sitting on the ...

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• 25 November

  Palm oil’s price switch won’t save the world’s rainforests

  

  If you see a flowering of “palm-oil free” labels on supermarket shelves next year, then thank Indonesian drivers, President Donald Trump’s trade negotiators, and sickly pigs in China. Palm oil — the red, semi-solid fat used in everything from noodles and soap to pastry and lipstick — has rarely been less attractive to consumer-product manufacturers. That isn’t so much a ...

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• 25 November

  Brexit won’t save UK’s equity analysts

  

  When the European Union’s MiFID II financial rule-book was rolled out in 2018, asset management veteran Martin Gilbert warned of the unintended consequences for the bankers and brokers supplying trading services and investment research to his industry. With fund managers suddenly forced to budget and pay for investment research ideas separately from their actual trades, it seemed inevitable that overall ...

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• 25 November

  Are haircuts for the Indian finance bald or bold?

  

  India is trying something new. After watching the shadow banking industry collapse in slow motion for more than a year, authorities have decided that enough is enough. They want to experiment with in-court bankruptcy for nonbank lenders. But will going to a haircut salon leave the financial system any neater? Dewan Housing Finance Corp. will be the test case of ...

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• 25 November

  LVMH to buy Tiffany for $16b in largest luxury-goods deal ever

  

  Bloomberg LVMH agreed to buy Tiffany & Co for more than $16 billion in the largest luxury-goods deal ever, raising the French conglomerate’s profile in jewellery and giving it access to a broader swath of shoppers in the US and Asia. The owner of the Louis Vuitton brand agreed to pay $135 a share for the US jeweller, according to ...

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• 25 November

  Amazon teams up with China upstart for Black Friday sale

  

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc is counting on a smartphone app known for cheap deals to lure Chinese consumers during the Black Friday online spree, in a partnership that extends to the end of the year. The US e-commerce giant’s cross-border unit has just opened a storefront on Pinduoduo (PDD), China’s No. 3 online retailer after Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and JD.com ...

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