June, 2019

• 23 June

  Army chief shot dead in Ethiopia ‘coup bid’ attacks

  

  Bloomberg The Ethiopian army’s chief of staff was shot dead by a bodyguard in what the government of Africa’s second-most populous country said was an assassination related to an attempted coup. General Seare Mekonnen and retired Major General Gezai Abera were killed at the army chief’s residence in the capital, Addis Ababa, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office said in an ...

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• 23 June

  Trump delays raids on immigrants

  

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump put off for two weeks the start of a planned nationwide roundup of undocumented immigrants, tempering a vow made to have them “removed from the country” starting next week. Trump said he was acting “at the request of Democrats,” although immigration officials suggested that reports on the timing of the actions played a role. The delay ...

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• 23 June

  Kim receives ‘excellent’ letter from US president

  

  Bloomberg North Korean leader Kim Jong-un received a personal letter from US President Donald Trump, state media KCNA reported. The letter has “excellent content” and Kim, along with his military, read it with “satisfaction,” KCNA reported. Correspondence between Trump and Kim “has been ongoing,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement, confirming the letter was sent ...

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• 23 June

  Boris Johnson wins cheers from Tories despite ‘turmoil’

  

  Bloomberg Boris Johnson pitched his bid for UK prime minister to Conservative Party members and drew cheers when he dodged questions about a spat with his partner that brought the police to his London home. Front-runner Johnson and his opponent Jeremy Hunt made their opening appeals to grass-roots Tories at a hustings, or political roadshow, that focussed attention on Johnson’s ...

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• 23 June

  Feeling squeezed, Iran tries to fight its way out

  

  The most important variable in the current Persian Gulf confrontation is time. The Trump administration wants to play a long game, to draw the sanctions tourniquet ever tighter. Iran needs to play a short game, to escape the American chokehold before it becomes fatal. This inner dynamic helps explain this past month’s events in the Gulf – Iran’s steady escalation ...

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• 23 June

  Case for a financial transaction tax

  

  It’s a good conservative principle that where possible, the government should recover the cost of its services from the people who use them, rather than from taxpayers at large. It’s also pretty uncontroversial that the government must oversee financial markets, to ensure that they are free and fair. It thus makes sense that the government should charge a user fee ...

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• 23 June

  How to build a banking champion in Europe

  Earlier this month, my colleague Elisa Martinuzzi suggested that merging Deutsche Bank AG and UBS Group AG would, on paper at least, create a European banking champion. She concluded, though, that the regulatory obstacles to such a deal would probably be insurmountable. But there is a three-way combination that could create a regional lender with the heft to take on ...

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• 23 June

  The biggest clue that world is turning dovish

  In a week defined by the prospect of fresh monetary stimulus around the globe, the country sending the loudest signal may surprise you: Indonesia. In the months after the Federal Reserve’s January pause in rate increases, Bank Indonesia remained extremely cautious, weighing low inflation against its bugaboo, the current-account deficit. Now, the central bank is unambiguously hinting that cheaper money ...

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• 23 June

  Russia’s dumb denials on downing of MH-17

  

  Three Russians and one Ukrainian have been charged in the Netherlands for their alleged roles in downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine five years ago. Only one of them may have been in active service in the Russian military at the time, but the international investigation has plenty of evidence of official Russian involvement. I’ve said before and ...

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• 23 June

  Where financial carnage comes as part of contract

  

  Serco Group Plc CEO Rupert Soames frequently boasts that the UK contracting firm was an early adopter of financial carnage – to stress that the business is now the better for it. Pulling through a crisis five years ago has given Soames the credibility to embark on M&A, and he has had his eye on defense contractor Babcock International Group ...

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