October, 2019

• 13 October

  Greta Thunberg going radical won’t help planet

  

  Political leaders around the globe have celebrated the 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg – but can they handle her as she and her supporters turn more radical? The protests launched in big cities worldwide by the environmental campaign group Extinction Rebellion are a first test. Extinction Rebellion, like Thunberg, wants governments to treat climate change as an emergency and to ...

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• 13 October

  Where HSBC goes, expect rivals to follow

  

  HSBC Holdings Plc’s interim Chief Executive Officer Noel Quinn is considering going much further than his former boss in cutting fat at the bank. He may triple job reductions announced just two months ago to as much as 6% of the workforce. Sure enough, Quinn may be trying to impress the board and investors to secure the No. 1 position ...

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• 13 October

  Tinkering with college diversity presents a tangled web

  

  The judge took 130 pages to explain that Harvard’s “holistic review” admissions policies — which include ascribing particular attributes to certain ethnicities, such as Asian Americans, and assessing the value to Harvard of those attributes — are, considering 41 years of Supreme Court precedents, permissibly race-conscious. She said the policies do not discriminate against Asian Americans. However, the suit some ...

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• 13 October

  Sterling investors approach ‘point of maximum danger’ on Brexit

  

  Bloomberg The pound’s rally could have a lot further to run if a Brexit deal is secured — and far to fall if talks fail next week. Traders are the most bullish on record for the UK currency over the next month after the European Union’s chief negotiator recommended that detailed talks can begin in earnest. The currency saw its ...

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• 13 October

  Gulf markets rise as traders await Aramco IPO details

  

  Bloomberg Equity markets in the Middle East advanced, tracking earlier emerging market gains. Saudi Arabia’s benchmark led the way, as traders wait for Saudi Aramco to pull the trigger on its mammoth IPO. Gauges from Riyadh to Dubai rose, with bank stocks contributing the most to the Tadawul All Share Index rally. An index tracking stocks from developing countries climbed ...

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• 13 October

  Trade deal is ‘game changer’ for tech stocks: Wedbush

  Bloomberg The partial US-China trade agreement is a “game changer” for technology stocks, at least according to one analyst. The deal announced by President Trump in the last hour of trading points to “brighter days” in relations between the two countries and makes it unlikely the US will follow through with the more than $160 billion in tariffs slated to ...

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• 13 October

  Fed to start buying $60b of Treasury bills every month

  

  Bloomberg The Federal Reserve said it will begin buying $60 billion of Treasury bills per month to improve its control over the benchmark interest rate it uses to guide monetary policy after turmoil rocked money markets in September. The central bank, in a statement, stressed that “these actions are purely technical measures to support the effective implementation” of interest-rate policy ...

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• 13 October

  PBOC clarifies standard assets over new rules

  

  Bloomberg China’s central bank has clarified the definition of standard assets in the nation’s $14.1 trillion investment-product industry as it moves toward an enforcement deadline. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) published draft rules to define what qualifies as standard credit assets. These assets refer to fixed-income securities, including government bonds, central bank bills, corporate bonds, debt financing instruments of ...

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• 13 October

  India faces severe slowdown: World Bank

  

  Bloomberg The World Bank cut India’s economic growth forecast by the most among South Asian nations on Sunday, below the outlook pegged by the nation’s central bank for this year, mainly because of a deceleration in domestic demand. India’s gross domestic product growth is projected at 6% in the fiscal year started on April 1, compared with 7.5% forecast in ...

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• 13 October

  Chime nears funding round of $5b valuation

  

  Bloomberg Chime, an online banking startup with more than 5 million customers, is close to raising new funding from investors at a valuation that could be north of $5 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The funding round is slated to be led by DST Global, said the person, who asked not to be identified discussing private ...

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