October, 2019

• 27 October

  Germany’s peace offering to European Central Bank

  Some good news for the European Central Bank (ECB). The German government has nominated Isabel Schnabel, an accomplished economist at the University of Bonn, to replace her compatriot Sabine Lautenschlaeger on the ECB’s executive board. Lautenschlaeger is quitting after the central bank’s decision to restart large-scale bond purchases (known as quantitative easing). It’s an anachronism that Germany, France and Italy ...

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• 27 October

  Indonesia’s Jokowi should keep building or risk hot money trap

  

  Driven in part by soaring public debt, Indonesian President Joko Widodo is going soft as he starts his final term. He’s emphasising “soft infrastructure’’ such as legal reform, education and counter-corruption while quietly easing back on the physical airports, roads and the like that were the key priority in the first five years. But he should beware of putting Indonesia ...

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• 27 October

  Infosys may need some private time to fix itself

  

  India’s best-known software exporter is facing an impossible trinity of sorts: Out of sales, margins and governance, Infosys Ltd. can hit only two goals at a time. Or so it would appear from yet-to-be-proven whistle-blower allegations against Chief Executive Officer Salil Parekh and Chief Financial Officer Nilanjan Roy that they used hyper-aggressive accounting practices to hide from investors the lack ...

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• 27 October

  Boeing management shake-up is too little too late

  

  Someone had to take the fall for the latest disastrous turn in Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis and that someone appears to be commercial airplanes chief Kevin McAllister. Boeing abruptly announced that McAllister is stepping down. He joined in 2016 from General Electric Co. and oversaw the unit responsible for the troubled Max, which has been grounded for seven months ...

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• 27 October

  Rumbling sound in US stocks marks return of risk appetite

  

  Bloomberg Beneath the din of earnings, clanging economic alarms and the blare of a political circus, US investors are quietly rediscovering their nerve. With the S&P 500 just touching a record, it may sound odd to suggest there was a lack of confidence to begin with. But gains this year have been built on caution as investors chased the safest, ...

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• 27 October

  Pound traders struggle to unpick hypotheticals

  

  Bloomberg The pound may be back from the precipice, but it’s still some way from sunlit uplands. A formal request to delay Brexit has all but removed the risk of a sterling crash triggered by a no-deal scenario. Instead, it’s left the pound in limbo and exposed to a tangle of political quarrels on both sides of the English Channel. ...

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• 27 October

  Investigators blame 737 Max design, pilot failure for crash

  

  Bloomberg Indonesian investigators found sweeping problems and missteps in connection with last year’s fatal Lion Air crash, including design flaws in Boeing Co’s 737 Max jet, certification failures by the US regulator and a raft of errors at the airline by pilots and mechanics. In a much-anticipated report, the National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) listed its findings and recommended fixes ...

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• 27 October

  India’s top airline posts ‘biggest’ quarterly loss

  

  Bloomberg InterGlobe Aviation reported a wider-than-expected quarterly loss, amid fierce competition in India, illustrating how even the country’s biggest airline isn’t immune to challenges in one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets. Loss at the operator of IndiGo widened to 10.7 billion rupees ($150 million) for the three months ended on September 30, compared with a loss of 6.5 billion ...

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• 27 October

  American rises as CEO sees cash flow poised for takeoff

  

  Bloomberg American Airlines Group Inc surged as executives sketched out a robust outlook for 2020 after two punishing years for investors. Profit and cash flow are poised to rise as the company improves operations and reaches the end of heavy investments in new jets, Chief Executive Officer Doug Parker said. That will enable the company to cut debt even if ...

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• 27 October

  Amazon tumbles as profit declines for first time in two years

  

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc’s effort to get packages from warehouse to doorstep in a single day helped push the retail giant to its first year-over-year quarterly profit decline since early 2017. The spending binge isn’t over. Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said that the costs of the company’s one-day delivery push will total some $1.5 billion during the holiday quarter. ...

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