August, 2019

• 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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• 7 August

  German industry suffered worst annual drop in a decade in June

  

  Bloomberg German industrial production registered its biggest annual decline in almost a decade, highlighting the severity of the trade-inflicted manufacturing slump in Europe’s largest economy. Output was down 5.2% in June from the previous year, the most since late 2009, when the country was recovering from the Great Recession that followed the global financial crisis. The numbers are the latest ...

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• 7 August

  Kim says North Korean missile test sends warning to US, South

  

  Bloomberg Kim Jong-un said North Korea’s latest missile tests were intended as a warning against ongoing US-South Korea military exercises, while President Donald Trump’s new defense chief defended the training as necessary to maintain readiness. North Korean state media said that Kim personally oversaw what allied military officials said was a pair of short-range ballistic missile launches a day earlier ...

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• 7 August

  China summons HK officials to Shenzhen to discuss unrest

  

  Bloomberg China’s top agencies in charge of Hong Kong affairs held a special meeting across the border in Shenzhen to discuss unrest in the financial hub that’s become a wider challenge to Beijing and raised questions about whether it should intervene more directly. The seminar was jointly held by the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council ...

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• 7 August

  China warship collision ‘led to standoff’

  

  Bloomberg The Taiwanese coast guard intervened to end an hour-long standoff between a freighter and an unidentified Chinese warship after the two vessels collided in the contested Taiwan Strait. The Taiwanese-registered bulk carrier Yutai No. 1 collided with a Chinese naval vessel around 20 nautical miles southeast of Taiwan-controlled Kinmen Island late on July 31, Fu Shih-hour, the cargo ship’s ...

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