October, 2019

• 20 October

  Zille’s return puts S Africa opposition head on notice

  Bloomberg Mmusi Maimane, the leader of South Africa’s main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), saw his hold on the party slip as his predecessor Helen Zille was elected head of the party’s Federal Council. Maimane has come under pressure to quit as leader of the DA after the party’s share of the vote shrank to 20.8% in May elections from 22.2% ...

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• 20 October

  Stock Vs. bond showdown tests history, trader nerves

  

  Bloomberg When it comes to mixed messages from markets, 2019 has been a year with few precedents. Whenever a believable signal starts to emerge from stocks or bonds about the economy, it changes. While some disagreement is normal, this is approaching the historic. For context, in a typical year, returns in either equities or Treasuries lead the other by 10 ...

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• 20 October

  Libra is ‘neat idea that’ll never happen’: Dimon

  

  Bloomberg Count the chief of the biggest US bank among doubters of Facebook Inc’s effort to create a cryptocurrency. “It was a neat idea that’ll never happen,” JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon said on a panel at a conference hosted by the Institute of International Finance in Washington. Dimon said the idea wasn’t particularly unique and pointed to ...

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• 20 October

  UK’s domestic stock ETF most popular in 9 months

  Bloomberg Conflicting Brexit headlines keep coming and Boris Johnson’s ability to pull off a deal remains in doubt. But this isn’t stopping stock investors from taking a bet on the UK economy. The Vanguard FTSE 250 UCITS exchange-traded fund, which tracks the index of mid-cap companies that are more sensitive to domestic growth and benefit when sterling is stronger, has ...

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• 20 October

  Oil tanker rates surge to new records amid geopolitical risks

  

  Bloomberg Nothing right now is stopping a surge in oil tanker rates that’s given owners of the vessels one of the biggest boosts in years. Rates have rallied so high that a secondhand supertanker could theoretically pay for itself in a couple of voyages, according to estimates from Clarkson Platou Securities AS. A normal payback period would often be about ...

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• 20 October

  S Africa’s Eskom ends ‘controlled blackouts’

  

  Bloomberg South Africa’s debt-laden power utility ended controlled blackouts as power supplies improve, though it says shortages gripping Africa’s most industrialised economy may not be over yet. Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., which provides about 95% of South Africa’s electricity, said it wouldn’t be implementing load shedding, a local term for rolling power blackouts, on Sunday. That comes after almost a ...

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• 20 October

  Barrick Gold agrees to pay over $300m to end Tanzania dispute

  

  Bloomberg Barrick Gold Corp. agreed to pay over $300 million to the Tanzanian government to end a long-running dispute that it says destroyed the value of its subsidiary Acacia Mining Plc’s assets. As part of the deal, which still must be approved by Tanzania’s attorney general, the government will be given a 16% stake in a renamed company known as ...

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• 20 October

  Why global economy remains so weak

  

  We’ve seen this movie before. The top economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — the global agency created after World War II to promote stability and growth in the world economy — unveil their latest forecast, which is almost always weaker than its previous forecast. The economists hold out the possibility that world growth will improve if the most ...

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• 20 October

  Your next vacation may be virtual

  

  Japan’s biggest airline is betting that the future of travel isn’t traveling at all. For the last month, a married couple in Oita Prefecture has been interacting with a robot — called an Avatar — that’s controlled by their daughter hundreds of miles away in Tokyo. Made by ANA Holdings Inc., it looks like a vacuum cleaner with an iPad ...

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• 20 October

  Making money is easy for J&J and UnitedHealth

  Being an enormously profitable industry leader doesn’t mean what it used to. Johnson & Johnson and UnitedHealthGroup Inc., the world’s biggest health-care company and health insurer, respectively, reported third-quarter earnings results that should thrill investors. Both managed to beat Wall Street earnings estimates and boosted full-year profit guidance above expectations as they generated a combined $80 billion in sales. You’d ...

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