March, 2019

• 23 March

  Trump’s ‘promises’ to the Rust Belt may haunt him

  

  When General Motors idled its auto plant in Lordstown, Ohio, this month, President Trump adopted a familiar strategy: He issued a nasty string of tweets blaming other people and promised, in effect, that he would restore the past. Trump’s angry, backward-looking approach may still appeal to some Rust Belt voters. But in the Ohio and Pennsylvania towns that helped win ...

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• 23 March

  Italy gets good news about its banks

  

  The banking industry hasn’t given Italy many reasons to celebrate. The country has stumbled from crisis to crisis, as it fought a rearguard action against the EU’s rules for handling failing lenders. The EU judges gave Rome a rare moment of joy. The bloc’s general court, its second-highest tribunal, ruled that the 2014 rescue of Banca Tercas SpA by the ...

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• 23 March

  Google’s $1.7b warning for the Silicon Valley

  If there was any lingering suspicion that the final months of Margrethe Vestager’s tenure as European Commissioner for Competition would fizzle out quietly, the last week’s announcement on Google has dispelled it. She’s imposed a remarkable 1.5 billion-euro ($1.7 billion) fine on the Alphabet Inc. division for its historical practice of forcing websites using its search bar to display only ...

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• 23 March

  What Europe should do about the Brexit

  Just when you thought the Brexit misadventure could get no worse, the speaker of the House of Commons stepped forward to turn it into a constitutional farce. What else can go wrong, one wonders, between now and March 29, the UK’s designated date to leave the EU? Prime Minister Theresa May met European Union’s other leaders on Friday and asked ...

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• 23 March

  Dirty secrets of mining faces a climate reckoning

  

  Can mining be green? That’s certainly the ambition of some of the biggest companies in the sector. Rio Tinto Group last year became the first major miner to stop digging up coal altogether. Glencore Plc, historically one of the commodity’s most vocal boosters, has promised to cap production at current levels. “We have a portfolio free of coal and oil ...

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• 23 March

  Ericsson teaches Anil Ambani – and India – a lesson

  

  Anil Ambani’s not going to jail after all, and Ericsson AB got its money. The Swedish company’s lawyers should take a bow. While the future of the Indian tycoon’s shrinking empire remains shrouded in uncertainty, at least questions over his near-term living arrangements got answered. Ambani thanked his “respected” elder brother, Mukesh, and sister-in-law, Nita, after avoiding a three-month prison ...

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• 23 March

  Job cuts may stymie Germany’s big bank merger

  

  Every day on my way to work, I pass a branch of Deutsche Bank AG and a Commerzbank AG outlet located almost exactly opposite each other on different sides of the street. One of them will probably close if the government-backed merger talks between the two lenders come to fruition – but I doubt the companies are up to making ...

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• 23 March

  Ford plans $900mn bet on Michigan-made autos of future

  

  Bloomberg Ford Motor Co plans to spend about $900 million and hire about 900 workers to build electric and self-driving vehicles in Michigan, while moving production of a small commercial van to Mexico from Europe. The moves, announced the same day Donald Trump visits an Ohio tank plant, follow the president’s sharp criticism of General Motors Co for idling a ...

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• 23 March

  Facebook’s Oculus unveils its new PC-connected Rift S

  

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc’s Oculus division unveiled a new version of the Rift virtual-reality headset, the Rift S, adding a higher-resolution display and a new design. The new model, which goes on sale for $399 sometime in the spring, plays the same games as the original Rift, but adds embedded sensors instead of external cameras for tracking. The previous model, which ...

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• 23 March

  Nintendo, Sony fall after Google unveils gaming service

  

  Bloomberg Sony Corp and Nintendo Co shares slid after Alphabet Inc’s Google outlined a major push into video games with a streaming service called Stadia. Nintendo dropped as much as 4.6 percent and Sony declined 4.5 percent, the biggest intraday drop in six weeks. Stadia lets developers put games on a streaming platform that will allow players to access the ...

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