December, 2019

• 18 December

  Macron takes on France’s 42 shades of pension grey

  

  Emmanuel Macron is the first French president in a decade who isn’t a baby boomer, and it shows. The 41-year-old’s battle to reform France’s high-tax, high-spend economy is often fought in the name of generational equality — largely by tilting the balance away from the elderly in favour of the young. Last year, as a gesture to help young people ...

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• 18 December

  Can Germany afford to ban Huawei?

  

  Germany wants a rapid roll-out of 5G technology to sort out its creaking mobile phone network. Yet a group of German lawmakers wants to ban equipment made by China’s Huawei Technologies Co. The country can’t do both. There is an inevitable trade-off for any nation considering a block on Huawei’s telecoms gear. Sticking to the equipment produced by its big ...

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• 18 December

  UK dealmakers will test Boris Johnson’s open-market cred

  The UK’s election of a right-wing, pro-market government with a thumping majority would certainly seem like a green light to foreign companies wanting to buy London-listed rivals. But the new political climate for takeovers may be hazier than it seems. Boris Johnson’s administration is still only four months old, so it’s hard to know precisely how it would approach a ...

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• 18 December

  Trade skepticism is alive, well in the bond market

  It looks as if after all the talk, all the back-and-forth and all the market swings, the US and China have finally reached the terms of a “phase-one” trade deal. The message from the world’s biggest bond market: Don’t get too excited about what that means for the economic outlook. For the first half of the US trading session, long-term ...

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• 18 December

  Halting 737 Max would hit half of Boeing’s business

  

  Imagine if Toyota Motor Corp. stopped making Corollas, or Coca-Cola Co. stopped making Diet Coke, or McDonald’s Corp. stopped serving Big Macs. That’s the best way of looking at reports that Boeing Co. is considering halting production of its troubled 737 Max single-aisle jet. Making and servicing commercial airplanes accounts for about 80% of Boeing’s operating income, and the 737 ...

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• 18 December

  Tech makes life on the coasts tough for banks

  

  Why is the nation’s financial industry concentrated in just a few very costly cities? The latest actions by the Charles Schwab Corp. suggest there’s less reason than there once was amid the squeeze the industry has been feeling since the Great Recession ended. In Schwab’s case, the discount brokerage firm slashed its fees, said it would buy a main rival ...

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• 18 December

  Bankers are actually playing with fire, once again

  

  As 2019 draws to a close, there’s more than a whiff of banking deregulation in the air. The US has relaxed its lender stress tests and made it easier again for Wall Street to trade using its own funds. In Europe, capital requirements are being softened. The reining in of bank risk after the financial crisis is giving way to ...

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• 18 December

  US futures, Europe stocks fluctuate; pound weakens

  

  Bloomberg US equity futures and European stocks drifted on Wednesday as investors digested a flurry of corporate news amid a lull in trade-war headlines. Bonds were mixed and the pound weakened. Contracts on the three main American equity benchmarks pointed to a directionless open a day after the S&P 500 Index closed just one index point higher at a new ...

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• 18 December

  FedEx plunges as bad results spur outlook cut

  

  Bloomberg FedEx Corp plunged after cutting its profit forecast for the second straight quarter, as weak international demand hurt sales and the courier ramped up investment to handle soaring e-commerce deliveries. The results for the company’s fiscal second quarter were “breathtakingly bad,” with weakness in both the ground-delivery unit and air-cargo business, said Deutsche Bank AG analyst Amit Mehrotra. Adjusted ...

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• 18 December

  Hong Kong’s airlines facing job cuts, even bankruptcies

  

  Bloomberg Hong Kong’s airlines face the prospect of further job cuts and even bankruptcies as anti-Beijing protests continue to deter tourists from the city, adding to the pressure on an industry already facing headwinds globally. Six months of anti-Beijing demonstrations have sent passenger traffic tumbling in Hong Kong, producing a cascade of profit warnings, flight cancellations and cost cuts at ...

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