October, 2019

• 6 October

  Danske non-resident unit ‘banker’ speaks out

  

  Bloomberg Between 2009 and 2015, Mihhail Murnikov spent his days handling as many transactions as he could at the non-resident unit of Danske Bank in Estonia. Roughly a year after Danske admitted that those transactions were part of a $220 billion money laundering scandal, prosecutors from Tallinn to Washington are still trying to get to the bottom of what really ...

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• 6 October

  Former Credit Suisse CEO calls negative rates ‘crazy’

  

  Bloomberg Oswald Gruebel, who led both of Switzerland’s two biggest banks during his career, criticised negative interest rates and argued they’d lead to a further decline of the country’s financial sector. “Negative interest rates are crazy. That means money is not worth anything anymore,” Gruebel said in an interview with Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag. “As long as we have ...

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• 6 October

  $63b of zombie buildings sound alarm for Indian banks

  

  Bloomberg Ashish Shah is caught in the middle of India’s latest financial crisis. As chief operating officer of Radius Developers, he’s struggling to fund construction of apartment complexes because of a liquidity crunch in the nation’s bloated shadow-banking sector. “Real estate is a sitting duck,” said Shah. “The timing is very crucial as the slowdown has hit the real estate ...

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• 6 October

  Austria’s elections show future of Germany

  

  Austria just held an election that indicates a new direction for European politics: Increasingly, the center right might find itself working with the Greens. The 33-year-old Sebastian Kurz, the winner of last week’s election, is more than a successful small-country politician. He’s a weathervane for all of Europe. Two years ago, he scored a difficult victory for his Austrian People’s ...

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• 6 October

  Macron wants to scan your face

  

  It’s an interesting twist of fate that the European governments whose job it is to enforce sweeping new data-protection laws, rolled out to curb intrusive tech firms like Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., are increasingly finding their own digital ambitions tripped up by them. Earlier this year, Ireland’s plan for a national “public services card” was deemed illegal by its ...

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• 6 October

  Tesla breaks record, but did it break even?

  Tesla Inc.’s quarterly deliveries announcements are not what they were, mainly because they’re so brief these days. Wednesday evening’s still managed to spark a 4% sell-off in immediate after-hours trading. On one level, that barely counts given this stock’s volatility. On the other, there were a couple of nuggets in the release that warrant watching. Most obviously, Tesla didn’t quite ...

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• 6 October

  How hedge funds are really playing Brexit

  Philip Hammond is officially “outside the tent,” to use Lyndon Johnson’s phrase. After losing his job as UK Chancellor of the Exchequer and then his badge as a Conservative MP by rebelling against Boris Johnson’s hardball Brexit strategy, Hammond has kicked up an almighty stink by accusing Johnson of being in thrall to wealthy financial “speculators” who would actively profit ...

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• 6 October

  How to put India’s shadow banks on firmer ground

  

  When a well-capitalized shadow bank’s credit rating goes from A+ to D in 10 days, it shows how fragile lending to India’s builders has become. It also highlights the policy error of not addressing the root of the problem: land. In June, three months before the unexpected default by Altico Capital India Ltd., I proposed a land bank that would ...

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• 6 October

  Boeing’s safety revamp is overdue but welcome

  

  Boeing Co. has a long way to go to rebuild its tarnished reputation on safety, but it’s moving in the right direction. The planemaker named Beth Pasztor — a 34-year Boeing veteran with a background in engineering and compliance — as the head of a new organisation focused on the safety of its products and services. The appointment is in ...

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• 6 October

  Losing Apple battle might help win tech tax war

  

  Apple Inc. is squaring up with tech’s European bete noire, MargretheVestager, over its historical tax arrangements in Ireland at a court hearing this week. If the iPhone maker wins, Vestager may be able to use the defeat to her benefit. Back in 2016, EU Competition Commissioner Vestager imposed a 13 billion-euro ($14.4 billion) bill on Apple for unpaid taxes in ...

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