April, 2019

• 20 April

  Amazon to shut down part of its China e-comm business

  

  Bloomberg In a rare retreat for Amazon.com Inc, the e-commerce giant plans to shut down its Chinese marketplace business in July as it shifts its focus to offering mainland consumers overseas products rather than goods from local sellers. Amazon will keep running its other businesses in China, including Amazon Web Services, Kindle e-books, and cross-border operations that help ship goods ...

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• 20 April

  Trump’s LNG push helps power German green cruise liner boom

  

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s bid to dump a glut of liquefied natural gas (LNG) on Europe is getting an unlikely boost: stringent regulations on shipping emissions that are prompting the continent’s shipyards to hunt for alternatives to high-polluting diesel. The International Maritime Organization will clamp down next year on sulfur and carbon emissions from diesel-powered ships. That’s sparked a hunt ...

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• 20 April

  Nestle, Unilever post sales growth despite price hike

  

  Bloomberg Europe’s consumer-goods giants are showing new signs of life by selling more food and cleaning supplies, even at higher prices. Nestle SA and Unilever surprised investors with strong starts to the year, reporting first-quarter sales growth that handily topped analysts’ estimates. The Swiss maker of KitKat bars and the Anglo-Dutch owner of Dove soap each cited a combination of ...

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• 20 April

  Pinterest IPO raises $1.4 billion as it shuns social-media tag

  

  Bloomberg Pinterest Inc.’s message to investors was don’t compare us to social media or a search engine. The outcome was that it raised about $1.4 billion in an above-range initial public offering. Pinterest operates in a crowded digital marketing space, where Google and Facebook Inc. get the lion’s share of ad dollars, and a smattering of smaller platforms like Twitter ...

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• 20 April

  UK home prices stagnate as buying activity plunges

  

  Bloomberg UK house prices stagnated in March as the number of transactions plunged, according to LSL Acadata. Values were flat on an annual basis last month as falls in London and southern England offset gains elsewhere, the firm said in a report. In March alone, prices rose just 0.1 percent, and transactions fell a seasonally-adjusted 15 percent, despite the month ...

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• 20 April

  US housing starts fall to weakest pace since 2017

  Bloomberg US new-home construction unexpectedly fell in March, decelerating to the slowest pace since May 2017 and suggesting builders remain wary even as lower mortgage rates and steady wage gains offer support to consumers. Residential starts fell 0.3 percent to a 1.139 million annualised rate after a downwardly revised 1.142 million pace in the prior month, according to government figures ...

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• 20 April

  How Xi overplayed his hand with the US

  

  In the rebalancing of Sino-American relations that’s underway, the usual roles are reversed: China’s normally deft President Xi Jinping appears to have badly overreached in seeking advantage. And President Trump, who often seems tone-deaf on foreign policy, is riding a bipartisan consensus that it’s time to push back against Beijing. The two nations will probably make a trade deal soon, ...

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• 20 April

  Italy has good news for Europe

  

  Whisper it quietly, but the worst may be over for the euro zone economy. After months of gloom, and with analysts wondering whether Europe was heading for a recession, the industrial sector shows signs of stabilising. The slight revival will please the European Central Bank (ECB), which is considering whether to double down on its monetary easing as it struggles ...

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• 20 April

  The US shouldn’t ease its gun export rules

  President Donald Trump, who has received unprecedented support from America’s gun lobby, seems determined to make it easier to export firearms and harder to keep track of whether they’re destined for terrorists or rogue regimes. He proposes to do this by shifting oversight of the export of semi-automatic and non-automatic firearms, as well as of various gun components and some ...

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• 20 April

  Stop rising inequality in the next recession

  Almost 10 years after the Great Recession ended, the growing threat of a new economic slowdown raises a troubling question: When the next recession strikes, what can the world’s central banks do? With interest rates low and their balance sheets still loaded with assets bought to fight the 2008 crisis, do they have the tools to respond? The Great Recession ...

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