August, 2019

• 7 August

  SoftBank’s Son to remove a big cloud on his investment empire

  

  Bloomberg Masayoshi Son can’t wait to wash his hands of Sprint Corp. SoftBank Group Corp. will stop consolidating the US carrier in its results starting next earnings report, anticipating a successful merger with T-Mobile USA Inc. despite questions over the deal’s eventual closing. That accounting change will slash SoftBank’s debt load and help it shed its image as a staid ...

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• 7 August

  Key gauge of Japan’s economy falls to lowest since early 2010

  

  Bloomberg A key measure of Japan’s economy fell to a level not seen since the wake of the financial crisis, adding to concerns about the economy ahead of an October sales-tax hike. The leading coincident index dropped to 93.3 in June, the lowest since February 2010, the Cabinet Office said. The index is one of Japan’s broadest indicators of current ...

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• 7 August

  Oil plummets as central banks cut interest rates

  

  Bloomberg Oil plunged, re-entering bear-market territory, as central banks cut interest rates around the world, feeding into an increasingly dismal economic view. Futures in New York fell as much as 4.2% on Wednesday to the lowest in almost two months. Crude was swept up in a global meltdown of stock and commodity markets after rate cuts in New Zealand, India ...

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• 7 August

  India’s Sterlite sees $35 billion energy storage opportunity

  

  Bloomberg Sterlite Power Grid Ventures Ltd., one of India’s biggest private transmission companies, sees a $35 billion investment opportunity into grid-connected energy storage projects in the country over the next decade to support government renewables targets. Chief Executive Officer Pratik Agarwal said he expects central and state governments to issue battery tenders totaling several gigawatts of capacity by no later ...

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• 7 August

  Glencore halts cobalt mine as profit plunges

  Bloomberg Glencore Plc reported the weakest profit in three years and announced plans to halt about a fifth of the world’s cobalt production after prices for the battery metal plunged. Glencore will shutter Mutanda project in the Democratic Republic of Congo for about two years in a move to put a floor under cobalt market, which has seen prices fall ...

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• 7 August

  Pension fund of UK railworkers on track for private debt push

  

  Bloomberg One of the UK’s largest pension funds, which oversees the retirement assets of 350,000 British railworkers, is betting on private credit to help preserve returns during the next downturn. RPMI Railpen aims to boost its exposure to private debt to as much as 40% within a private investment strategy totaling 4.5 billion pounds ($5.5 billion) across two funds. While ...

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• 7 August

  Billionaire preaches ecology in Europe’s smoggy coal heartland

  

  Bloomberg Zygmunt Solorz, a media-shy Polish billionaire who owns lignite-fired power plants and a TV network, just spoke out on an unexpected subject: ecology. Solorz, who made his $2.5 billion fortune on mobile phones and television, plans to set up an association called Clean Poland Program that will encourage Poles to care more about clean air. The European Union’s largest ...

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• 7 August

  Tesla scrutinised over Model 3 safety claims

  

  Bloomberg The US National Highway Traffic Administration sent Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk a cease-and-desist letter last year regarding Model 3 safety claims and subpoenaed the carmaker for information on several crashes, according to documents posted by a nonprofit advocacy group. NHTSA lawyers took issue with an October 7 Tesla blog post that said the Model 3 had achieved the lowest ...

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• 7 August

  World economy edges closer to a recession as trade fears spread

  

  Bloomberg The escalating trade war between the US and China is nudging the world economy towards its first recession in a decade with investors demanding politicians and central bankers act fast to change course. In the US alone, the recession risk is “much higher than it needs to be and much higher than it was two months ago,” Lawrence Summers, ...

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• 7 August

  US slaps duty on $4.4 billion of China cabinets

  

  Bloomberg Add $4.4 billion in imported cabinets to the long list of Chinese goods slapped with US levies in the escalating trade dispute between Washington and Beijing. The Commerce Department said it will ask the US Customs and Border Protection to collect cash deposits from importers of the wooden cabinets and vanities from China based on subsidy rates of as ...

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