March, 2019

• 18 March

  Vodafone invests in fund generating money off late payments

  

  Bloomberg Big companies often leave their suppliers hanging for weeks without pay, but Vodafone Group Plc is taking this a step further: it’s investing in a fund that makes money off the delay. The British phone operator poured 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) into the 2.4 billion-euro fund run by beleaguered Swiss asset manager GAM Holding AG, which generates returns ...

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• 18 March

  The Pentagon can’t get everything it wants

  

  Sen. Mark Warner is all for defense modernisation. But just don’t touch those aircraft carriers, six of which are based in Norfolk. The Virginia Democrat had said a year ago year that rather than investing in 20th-century military technology, he wanted to discuss “a reallocation of some of those resources” to deal with the 21st-century challenge of cyber threats. But ...

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• 18 March

  Boeing’s bad week roils an industry

  

  It was a week that began in tragedy with the second fatal crash of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max jet in five months, and it ended with the first of what could be many short-term financial warnings as the aviation industry grapples with only the third fleet-wide grounding by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) since the 1970s. We still don’t know ...

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• 18 March

  Maybe Mark Zuckerberg really meant what he said

  

  When it comes to Facebook Inc., Chris Cox has been very, very important to the company. He was an executive from the social network’s early years, a friend and vacation buddy of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a touchstone of the corporate culture and the person most responsible for the “news feed,” the stream of posts in Facebook that has become a ...

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• 18 March

  UK can stop the Brexit countdown, think again

  In a series of votes last week, Britain’s House of Commons decided to reject (again) Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit agreement with the European Union (EU); to rule out a no-deal Brexit; to delay the exit process; and to set aside, for now, calls for a second referendum. As you can see, the list of things Britain doesn’t want is ...

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• 18 March

  Theresa May’s Brexit strategy might have outflanked critics

  

  To many, the handling of the Brexit saga by the British government has appeared chaotic and inconsistent, leading some to predict the demise of Prime Minister Theresa May’s leadership and the risk of the UK stumbling into a disorderly Brexit. That is certainly a possibility. Yet game theory suggests that, with external constraints starting to bind a lot more, the ...

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• 18 March

  Exports go from anchor to millstone in Asia

  

  Exports have gone from a plus for Asia to a real drag. Almost daily, trade data from somewhere show a deterioration. Monday was Japan’s turn. Shipments dropped 1.2 percent in February from a year earlier, the third consecutive slide and twice the dip envisaged by economists. Many people view Japan’s challenges as unique and the country as in a long-term ...

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• 18 March

  What if Google and US government merged?

  

  My colleague Conor Sen made a bold prediction: Government will be the driver of the US economy in coming decades. The era of Silicon Valley will end, supplanted by the imperatives of fighting climate change and competing with China. This would be a momentous change. The biggest tech companies — Amazon.com, Apple Inc., Facebook Inc., Google (Alphabet Inc.) and (a ...

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• 18 March

  US equities gained at start of busy week; bonds dip

  

  Bloomberg US equities gained at the start of a week filled with potentially significant catalysts from central bank meetings, geopolitical developments and economic data. Treasuries and the dollar drifted lower. The S&P 500 opened slightly higher, led by financials and energy shares, while chipmakers helped propel an advance in the Nasdaq 100. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fought to hold ...

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• 18 March

  Foreigners splurge on Saudi shares as FTSE begins upgrade

  

  Bloomberg Foreign investors increased purchases of Saudi equities last week to the highest value on record as they positioned for the kingdom’s inclusion in major benchmarks. Foreigners were net buyers of about 1.6 billion riyals of stocks in five days through March 14, more than any other week since the data were first disclosed in 2015. The inflows picked up ...

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