October, 2019

• 19 October

  UK retail sales hold firm as threat of no-deal Brexit looms

  Bloomberg UK retail sales held up better than expected in September in the face of the intensifying Brexit crisis. The quantity of goods sold rose 0.2% from August when auto fuel is excluded, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. Sales including fuel were unchanged. A buoyant labour market has supported consumer spending through the turmoil since the 2016 referendum. ...

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• 19 October

  Amazon’s Deliveroo deal faces review from UK watchdog

  

  Bloomberg The UK competition regulator has started a review into Amazon.com Inc’s bid to buy a slice of fast-growing food delivery startup Deliveroo, adding to the e-tailing giant’s antitrust woes around the globe. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said on its website it’s investigating the purchase of rights and a minority shareholding in Roofoods Ltd, which does business under ...

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• 19 October

  Europe’s biggest FMCG firms signal slowdown in China

  

  Bloomberg Two of Europe’s biggest consumer-goods companies signalled a slowdown in China, whose consumers have driven global demand for everything from baby formula food to shampoo. Nestle SA said sales in the country were flat for the first nine months, while Unilever said business there “slowed a little” in the latest period. Nestle shares fell as much as 1.6% in ...

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• 19 October

  China surveillance giant warns of client losses after US curbs

  

  Bloomberg Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co warned it may lose customers in overseas markets because of its US blacklisting, underscoring the extent to which curbs on the sale of American technology may hurt the world’s largest video surveillance business. Executives at the Chinese camera provider, which reported profit in line with estimates, said however the company was large enough to ...

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• 19 October

  Reliance’s profit beats estimates on telecom, retail

  

  Bloomberg Reliance Industries Ltd’s quarterly profit rose 18% from a year earlier beating analyst estimates, bolstered by telecommunications, retail and stable refining margin. India’s biggest company by market value posted a consolidated net income of 112.6 billion rupees ($1.58 billion) in the three months through September, against 95.2 billion rupees a year ago, it said in an exchange filing. That ...

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• 19 October

  Nielsen: Rural India’s consumer goods consumption slows to seven-year low

  

  Bloomberg Sales of fast moving consumer goods in rural India had their slowest growth in seven years as sagging incomes and a broader credit crunch weighed on spending in the country’s hinterland, where the majority of its population lives. Sales growth of corner-store items from tea to toothpastes dipped to 5% across India’s villages in the quarter ended September, tumbling ...

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• 19 October

  Investors pour $735m into S’pore fintech deals

  Bloomberg Investors poured a record $735 million into financial-technology ventures in Singapore in the first nine months of this year, according to research from Accenture Plc, which analysed data from CB Insights, Pitchbook and Tracxn. That’s up 69% from the same period a year earlier and exceeds the $642 million raised in all of 2018, the study found. Investments in ...

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• 19 October

  Singapore offers spectrum, targets standalone 5G by 2022

  

  Bloomberg Singapore said it wants all four of its carriers to introduce 5G services, with half the city-state covered by a standalone network by 2022 to maintain competitiveness in developing technology. The telecom regulator said it will select two network operators to deploy the 3.5GHz spectrum band on a standalone basis, while the two others will get bandwidth for upgrading ...

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• 19 October

  Just 500 people own 36% of all equity in Thai firms

  

  Bloomberg About 36% of Thailand’s corporate equity is concentrated in the hands of just 500 people, highlighting wealth inequality in the country, a study released by the Bank of Thailand’s research institute shows. Each of these 500 on average amasses 3.1 billion baht ($102 million) in company profits annually, according to the report from the Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic ...

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• 19 October

  Negative rates ‘extraordinarily unlikely’ in Australia, says Lowe

  

  Bloomberg Interest rate cuts are supporting Australia’s economy and housing market, Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe said. “The economy has been through a very soft patch over the past year but it is actually gradually improving, the lower interest rates are working,” Lowe said during a panel event at the International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings in Washington. Highlighting an upswing ...

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