August, 2019

• 4 August

  Berkshire cash pile hits record $122 billion as profits increase

  

  Bloomberg Warren Buffett’s distaste for overpaying is winning out over his frustration with sitting on a lot of cash. With stocks at record highs, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. sold $1 billion more worth of stocks than it bought last quarter, its biggest net selling since the end of 2017. Buffett spent last year building a massive stake in Apple Inc. and ...

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• 4 August

  Poland’s $32 billion mortgage fiasco gets its day in EU court

  

  Bloomberg From his humble beginnings setting up a one-man law firm in Warsaw, Jacek Czabanski has become a crusader for Poland’s struggling mortgage holders, fighting a battle that stands to reshape the country’s powerful banking industry. Since 2015, Czabanski has been busy building a case for several hundred mortgage holders who have sued their banks for what they say are ...

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• 4 August

  White House weighs September release of new health care plan

  

  Bloomberg The Trump administration is considering releasing a health care plan next month to counter the push by some 2020 Democratic candidates for a Medicare for All program, Dow Jones reports, citing people familiar with the discussions that it didn’t identify. The plan could include a guarantee to maintain coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, as well as efforts to ...

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• 4 August

  Uber expects another short-term UK license

  Bloomberg Uber Technologies Inc. expects to only be given another short-term license to operate in London when its current permit to operate there ends towards the end of next month, Sky News reported. The company has little chance of securing a longer term five-year agreement for the UK capital, according to report. London is one of Uber Technologies’s most successful ...

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• 4 August

  For Ireland plc, pain of no-deal Brexit starts to hit home

  

  Bloomberg Ireland’s biggest companies are getting a taste of the pain that could come from the UK crashing out of the European Union without a deal. Amid the deepening impasse over how to deal with the Irish border, the country’s ISEQ All-Share Index has been the worst performing benchmark in Europe, the Middle East and Africa since Boris Johnson became ...

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• 4 August

  Gunman kills 20, wounds 26 at Walmart store in Texas

  

  Texas / WAM A man armed with a rifle opened fire at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, killing 20 people and wounding 26 others as panicked shoppers and employees scurried for cover before the gunman surrendered to police at the scene, Reuters has reported. Many shoppers in the busy store were buying back-to-school supplies when they found themselves ...

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• 4 August

  Sudan rivals ink new power-sharing deal

  

  Bloomberg Sudan’s ruling military council signed a deal with its political opposition outlining how they’ll share power in a three-year transitional government, the latest step towards democracy after President Omar al-Bashir’s overthrow. The two sides inked the so-called constitutional declaration on Sunday in the capital, Khartoum. The African Union’s envoy to Sudan, Mohamed el-Hassan Lebatt, said at the ceremony that ...

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• 4 August

  Beijing won’t let HK unrest go on: Xinhua

  

  Bloomberg China’s central government won’t sit by and let the disruption in Hong Kong go on, according a commentary by the Xinhua News Agency, which condemned the violence that’s wracked the financial hub for weeks and took aim at protesters whom it said tossed a Chinese national flag into the harbour. “We must warn all the ugly forces that try ...

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• 4 August

  Hundreds detained at Moscow protests

  

  Bloomberg Russian police detained almost 700 people, including opposition leaders, at Moscow protests against the authorities’ decision to ban anti-Kremlin candidates from running for the city council next month, according to independent legal-aid group OVD-Info. The number of protesters being held reached 685 as of 6:40 pm local time, the group estimated on its website. The Moscow police unit on ...

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• 4 August

  Immigration opens another divide for 2020 Democrats

  

  Bloomberg Calls by some top Democratic presidential contenders to decriminalise border crossings have divided the party and risk turning the issue of immigration into one that President Donald Trump eagerly exploits during his 2020 re-election bid. Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are among the leading candidates who’d make illegally crossing the border a civil rather than a ...

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