July, 2019

• 1 July

  Venezuela to probe death of detained navy captain

  Bloomberg Venezuela’s government said it will investigate the death of a navy captain who was being held on charges of treason and attempted assassination of President Nicolas Maduro. Captain Rafael Acosta Arevalo, 49, was arrested along with three other soldiers and two police officials, joining dozens of people detained since an April 30 uprising against Maduro. Officials said the prisoner ...

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• 1 July

  Fresh Hong Kong clashes signal difficult path for leader

  

  Bloomberg Hong Kong police clashed with black-clad protesters in a fresh sign of unrest as the city’s China-backed chief executive promised to be more open and inclusive at the turbulent start of her third year in office. Carrie Lam made the remarks in a ceremony to mark the anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule in 1997, her first ...

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• 1 July

  North Korean media goes crazy for Trump’s border meeting with Kim

  

  Bloomberg North Korean state media released gushing reports of Kim Jong-un’s Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) summit with President Donald Trump, as the regime sought to use another history-making meeting with the US leader to validate its policy decisions. The front page of North Korea‘s ruling party Rodong Sinmun newspaper was dominated by a seven-photo splash of Trump making the first crossing ...

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• 1 July

  Jeremy Hunt seeks to boost credentials with no-deal Brexit plan

  

  Bloomberg Jeremy Hunt seeks to burnish his Brexit credentials as he sets out his strategy for preparing the UK for a no-deal departure from the European Union The foreign secretary, who campaigned for the “remain” side in 2016’s referendum, will use a speech in London to lay out the plan, which includes preparing for a no-deal budget that will cut ...

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• 1 July

  Central banks are creating a horde of zombie investors

  

  Ruchir Sharma, chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, wrote a provocative op-ed in the New York Times last weekend. Titled “When Dead Companies Don’t Die,” it argues that unprecedented monetary stimulus from global central banks created a “fat and slow” world, dominated by large companies and plagued by a swarm of “zombie firms” — those that should be ...

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• 1 July

  FedEx’s disappointments piling up

  

  FedEx Corp. has managed to fall out of a basement window. Expectations heading into the parcel-delivery company’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings were low. In the past six months, the company cut its 2019 outlook twice amid a weakening global trade backdrop; announced a series of puzzling executive departures; became a candidate for inclusion on China’s list of unreliable entities; and dropped ...

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• 1 July

  Allergan is a $63 billion Botox job for AbbVie

  When the maker of the top-selling arthritis drug says it’s buying a leader in anti-wrinkle treatments, you’d be forgiven if your initial response to the news was that it seems like a match made in heaven. But take a closer look, and AbbVie Inc.’s $63 billion purchase of Botox maker Allergan Plc isn’t such a perfect fit. AbbVie is desperate ...

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• 1 July

  Trump’s trade truce shows Huawei was political pawn

  President Donald Trump’s decision to restart sales of US technology products to Huawei Technologies Co. may ease tensions with China, and even help end the trade war. Yet as far as deals go, this is set to be one of Trump’s worst. It doesn’t stop the technology cold war underway, and weakens the US stance that Huawei isn’t just a ...

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• 1 July

  The internet is everywhere, but internet jobs are not

  

  The internet was supposed to render geography irrelevant. But the corporations that dominate the internet have turned out to be remarkably concentrated, geographically speaking. In internet publishing and web search portals, a somewhat ungainly but very important North American Industry Classification System category, 58 percent of all US jobs in December could be found in just five counties, and more ...

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• 1 July

  For China, kicking a $9tn habit is a tough work

  

  So much for deleveraging. China’s biggest shadow lenders are back. On the surface, it may look like regulators have managed to shrink the role of trust companies, after a wide-ranging, mo-nths-long crackdown on China’s financial underbelly. Assets und-er management at these lightly regulated non-bank financial firms – a hybrid of private equity, asset management and lending – posted their first ...

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