May, 2019

• 18 May

  BMW CEO defends track record despite weaker margins

  

  Bloomberg BMW AG’s chief executive officer defended his track record at the company’s annual meeting, highlighting a luxury lead in the US and sales growth through a Chinese downturn, even as the carmaker battles to reverse weaker margins. BMW is struggling alongside rivals with a drop in demand after years of auto-industry growth, and record spending for a technology transition. ...

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• 18 May

  Conservatives edge closer to victory in Australia elections

  

  Bloomberg Australian PM Scott Morrison’s conservative government appeared poised to claim a come-from-behind victory in Australia’s election against the left-leaning Labor party. While opinion polls had pointed to a Labor win, with more than half the votes counted the Australian Broadcasting Corp predicted the Liberal-National coalition would form government, though it remained unclear whether it would get the 76 seats ...

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• 18 May

  Indonesia arrests 29 suspects for plotting attack on poll rallies

  

  Bloomberg Indonesian police have arrested dozens of extremists linked to IS, who authorities said were plotting attacks next week on political rallies outside the nation’s election commission office during the announcement of the official result of the presidential vote. Most of the 29 suspects detained in the past two weeks were former IS extremists, who fought for several years in ...

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• 18 May

  Austria faces snap poll over ‘video scandal’

  

  Bloomberg Austria may be headed for snap elections after the center-right government stumbled over a video showing the vice chancellor promising government contracts in return for campaign funding. The ball is in the court of conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz after Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, from the nationalist Freedom Party, stepped down, calling his own actions “dumb” and “embarrassing.” Kurz is ...

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• 18 May

  Merkel successor puts pressure on her to quit

  

  Bloomberg Angela Merkel is feeling pressure from her chosen successor to quit as German chancellor after this month’s elections for the European parliament, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. With Merkel’s Christian Democrats expected to lose ground in the May 26 vote, their leader, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, sent a message to Merkel urging her to resign and called ...

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• 18 May

  India’s Rahul Gandhi mounts a quiet turnaround

  

  Bloomberg Five years ago, Rahul Gandhi, scion of one of the world’s most famous political dynasties, stood with his mother by his side, trying to explain why his Indian National Congress had suffered the worst defeat in its history. Rival Bharatiya Janata Party had won a landslide and crowned Narendra Modi prime minister. For much of India’s 2014 elections, political ...

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• 18 May

  The Ex-Im Bank and essence of socialism

  

  Briefly suspending their warnings about the rising tide of socialism, a large majority of Senate Republicans recently joined with almost all their Democratic colleagues in affirming the essence of socialism, which is government allocation of capital. The Senate’s revival of the Export-Import Bank is a redundant reminder that the rhetorical discord between the parties exaggerates their actual differences. The Ex-Im ...

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• 18 May

  Macron gets it all wrong over Nissan

  

  Like a practitioner of the Japanese art of Kabuki, Emmanuel Macron’s administration is going through some elaborate dance steps to try to shape the future of the Renault-Nissan carmaking alliance. The French president wants to protect the jobs of his citizens, as well as taxpayer money and France’s credibility as an industrial investor. It’s been an incredibly clumsy performance. France ...

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• 18 May

  Pressure makes diamonds at China’s technology titans

  Persistent macroeconomic struggles and changing winds of domestic regulation have thrown plenty of curveballs at China’s top two technology companies, Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Yet both of them managed to offer promising signs for investors willing to take the time to dig into the numbers. The common thread for both was the performance of relatively new ...

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• 18 May

  Trump’s trade war with China isn’t his only one

  President Trump’s trade fight with China has been commanding headlines and the attention of financial markets — but don’t forget that another trade dispute is simmering alongside. The US has threatened to impose new tariffs on cars imported from the European Union (EU), and the EU has prepared a list of imports from the US that will face higher tariffs ...

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