October, 2019

• 2 October

  Singapore’s REIT IPO gains in 6 years

  Bloomberg Lendlease Global Commercial REIT’s stellar IPO debut is yet another testament to the hunger for yield among Asian investors. The real estate investment trust, part of Australia’s Lendlease Group, started trading on the Singapore bourse on Wednesday, surging 6.3 percent at the open from its offer price. This is the biggest jump among the city-state’s REITs in the past ...

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• 2 October

  BP CEO to step down

  

  Bloomberg BP Plc boss Bob Dudley is planning to step down, and the energy giant’s board is yet to decide on the timing. “I said a long time ago that around the age of 65 I would” step down, Dudley told reporters on the sidelines of the Russia Energy Week conference in Moscow. Dudley took over as chief executive officer ...

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• 2 October

  Dissent culture at the Fed

  

  The battle to control the Federal Reserve is being waged on many fronts. There’s President Trump’s relentless tirades against Fed Chairman Jerome Powell — and Powell’s low-key rejoinders. There’s the clamour from investors (aka Wall Street) for easy credit to prop up stock prices. Some economists favour cheap credit to sustain low unemployment (3.7%). What’s been missing is a cogent ...

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• 2 October

  Worried about climate? Skip that cruise

  

  Cruise ships are big business for port cities around the world. But starting next year, Cannes, one of the world’s most famous ports-of-call, will no longer welcome them unless they comply with strict pollution controls. Passengers who choose to sail on dirty vessels will have to disembark elsewhere. So far, the industry doesn’t seem worried. It should be. Increasingly, consumers ...

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• 2 October

  AT&T should learn from Singer’s Italian experience

  To understand Elliott Management Corp.’s plans for AT&T Inc., it’s worth examining how it tackled a relative telecommunications minnow in Europe. The activist investor’s 2018 fight for control of Telecom Italia SpA may have provided something of a dry run. Last year, after revealing its stake in the Italian carrier, the fund run by combative billionaire Paul Singer started with ...

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• 2 October

  An industrial crisis is brewing in Germany

  In the darkest days of the 2009 recession, Germany’s industrial output was collapsing at an annual rate of more than 20%. An unfathomable implosion but one that thankfully ended almost as quickly as it started. Some 10 years on, a crisis is brewing once again in the country’s industrial heartlands. The pain could prove more enduring this time. So far ...

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• 2 October

  Downtown Singapore is a new property playground

  

  Singapore’s property industry is coming to terms with the idea that, in about a decade, the city may no longer have a central business district. Landlords couldn’t be more chuffed. There will still be offices, but without the rigid boundary between places where people work, and where they live and shop and dine. Local developer GuocoLand Ltd. is among the ...

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• 2 October

  Ireland’s tax defense is a tired old tune

  

  In 2014, when Brussels regulators began to probe Apple Inc.’s low-tax arrangements in Ireland, an unlikely figure rushed to Dublin’s defense. U2’s lead singer Bono, no stranger to attractive offshore jurisdictions, pleaded that Ireland’s multinational-friendly model had brought the only prosperity the nation had ever known. “We are a tiny little country,” he told The Observer newspaper. “We don’t have ...

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• 2 October

  Americans feel a little down about a decent economy

  

  In early 2017, a strange pattern began to appear. So-called soft economic numbers – surveys of business leaders and consumers — started to look much more positive than the hard numbers of investment, growth and measures of business activity. Many wondered whether the optimism that people were expressing reflected their rational expectations of an improving economy, or whether it was ...

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• 2 October

  UPS drones win FAA milestone permission to take off shackles

  

  Bloomberg United Parcel Service (UPS) Inc won US certification to fly drones under regulations similar to those for airlines, a milestone that allows the company to vastly expand airborne deliveries. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gave the courier permission to use delivery drones at hospital, university and corporate campuses with few restrictions, for example, letting operators fly the aircraft at ...

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