August, 2019

• 5 August

  UK yields hit record low on election risk, global trade woes

  

  Bloomberg UK government bonds rallied, driving benchmark yields to a record low, as global risk sentiment worsened and speculation swirled that the nation’s new Prime Minister is preparing for a general election. Ten-year gilt yields slipped below 0.5% for the first time on a potential increase in UK political uncertainty, with Premier Boris Johnson’s spending plans fueling speculation about a ...

  Read More »
• 5 August

  Facebook puts its name on Instagram, WhatsApp brands

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc. plans to attach its name to Instagram and WhatsApp, branding them “Instagram from Facebook” and “WhatsApp from Facebook.” The move is controversial because both of the apps were born outside of Facebook, have very different corporate cultures and have thrived, in part, by having their own identities with consumers. Founders of the photo-sharing app and the messaging ...

  Read More »
• 5 August

  Putin’s commitment to ditch the dollar slowly becoming a reality

  

  Bloomberg Russia is acting on a pledge by President Vladimir Putin to shrink the role of dollar in international trade as tensions sour between Washington and Moscow. The shift is part of a strategy to “de-dollarize” the Russian economy and lower its vulnerability to the ongoing threat of US sanctions. But while the central bank was able to quickly dump ...

  Read More »
• 5 August

  Euro-area growth momentum slides

  

  Bloomberg Economic activity in the euro area’s private sector weakened further as still-solid services couldn’t make up for rapidly deteriorating manufacturing. A composite Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) dropped to 51.5 in July, with goods output falling for a sixth months and at the greatest extent since 2013. “The service sector continued to sustain the expansion of the overall euro-zone economy ...

  Read More »
• 5 August

  Brazil mulls dropping barriers to US ethanol

  Bloomberg As China turns its back on American ethanol in a lingering trade spat, Brazil is considering opening its doors to US biofuel. Brazilian authorities are debating whether to yield to Washington’s request to lift ethanol-import duties as a way of facilitating talks for a bilateral trade deal with the US. A broad trade accord would benefit many Brazilian products ...

  Read More »
• 5 August

  Trump officials still pushing for a coal bailout, says regulator

  

  Bloomberg High ranking officials in the Trump administration are still pushing to bail out money-losing coal plants, more than a year after an earlier proposal to revive the industry failed. Any new effort to save coal plants may find a friend in Kentucky Republican Neil Chatterjee, now chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the very agency that rejected the ...

  Read More »
• 5 August

  East Capital says its $3.4bn deal is just the beginning

  Bloomberg East Capital Group, a Swedish asset manager that specialises in emerging markets, is looking for more takeover targets after buying a $3.4 billion manager in its local market. The Monyx Asset Management AB purchase, which was closed this month, reflects a consolidation trend in the industry as smaller managers struggle, according to East Capital Chairman Peter Elam Hakansson, who ...

  Read More »
• 5 August

  India scraps special status for Kashmir, escalating tensions

  

  Bloomberg India has revoked the special constitutional status of Kashmir in a move that’s drawn protests in parliament and risks worsening its already fraught security relationship with rival Pakistan in the disputed region. It took Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government just a couple of hours to erase seven decades of autonomous state government in Kashmir, which analysts say is aimed ...

  Read More »
• 5 August

  Cairo car bomb kills 20 outside hospital

  

  Bloomberg Egypt’s government said extremists were behind a blast that killed at least 20 people in central Cairo, one of the deadliest acts of violence by extremists in the North African nation’s capital in years. Extremists were transporting an explosives-laden vehicle for an attack when it detonated outside the National Cancer Institute, the Interior Ministry said. Forty-seven other people were ...

  Read More »
• 5 August

  Somalia executes two militants for Dec attack

  Bloomberg Somalian authorities executed two al-Shabaab militants who were convicted for a December attack that killed at least 13 people in the capital, Mogadishu. The men “were executed by firing squad on Monday morning,” Chairman of the Somali military court Hassan Ali Nur told reporters. The al-Qaeda-linked militants have waged an insurgency in Somalia since 2006 in a bid to ...

  Read More »