March, 2019

• 20 March

  May stuck in fight over Brexit delay

  

  Bloomberg Britain’s messy divorce from the European Union is once again stuck between the demands of Theresa May’s divided government and the reality of what the bloc is willing to offer her — this time over how long the delay to Brexit should be. With just nine days left until the UK is due to exit the EU, the prime ...

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• 20 March

  Algeria’s ruling party supports protesters

  

  Bloomberg Algeria’s ruling party on Wednesday voiced support for protesters demanding the country’s embattled president step down, in the latest signal of growing rifts within the ruling powers. In comments carried by Algerian television, National Liberation Front chief Moued Bouchareb said Abdelaziz Bouteflika “understood the popular protests and its demands.” A statement issued by the party’s brass after a testy ...

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• 20 March

  US campaign against Huawei must survive the trade deal

  

  The US-led campaign against Huawei Technologies Co., China’s telecom giant, has attracted a lot of attention for the indictment of the company’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou. Last week, Huawei’s lawyers pleaded not guilty in a New York federal court to 13 counts of fraud involving an elaborate scheme to violate US sanctions against Iran. That case is no doubt ...

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• 20 March

  BOJ gets extra innings to hit a single

  

  Haruhiko Kuroda is miles from where he wants to be. About 200 miles. That’s the distance from Tokyo to Nagoya, where the Bank of Japan governor gave a very upbeat speech last year. Some interpreted those remarks as laying the groundwork for a shift from the ultra-accommodation that’s been the central bank’s trademark. In terms of monetary policy, Nagoya might ...

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• 20 March

  Fintech is spiralling into $34 billion stratosphere

  Every deal in the payments business looks expensive – until the next one comes along. Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) is paying a heady $34 billion plus for Worldpay Inc. not much more than a year after the rival payments processing company bulked up with an expensive takeover of its own. The logic of the combination is simply greater scale ...

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• 20 March

  Germany is making its big bank problem even bigger

  Germany has come up with a solution to the deep troubles at one of the world’s largest banks: make it part of an even bigger one. The people who oversee Europe’s financial system had better be ready for the consequences if this doesn’t end well. The Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank is in talks to merge with crosstown rival Commerzbank — a ...

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• 20 March

  India’s central bank is full of surprises these days

  

  Several theories explain why India’s new central bank governor took his boldest step yet. Little attention has been paid to the consequences. Last week, Governor Shaktikanta Das made an unexpected tweak to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) traditional management of longer-term liquidity in the banking system: by buying and selling government bonds. India’s currency, sovereign-debt and credit markets were ...

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• 20 March

  Chinese lenders have a hidden wave of bad debt

  

  China’s banks may have a flood of bad loans waiting in the wings. Not that you’d know it from looking at official levels for 2018, which suggest the problem was broadly contained. The reality is that newly soured debt was coming through the front door as fast as banks could shovel it out the back. Authorities worked hard to restrain ...

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• 20 March

  Facebook’s outages reveal its value to society

  

  When Facebook went down for hours this week, the internet was all atwitter (sorry). Most of what I came across was fairly snarky, but a lot of the posts were pretty clever. I saw a variation of this retweeted many times: “News flash! Facebook down! People talk to each other, kids play with toys!” (Actually, they were probably playing Fortnite ...

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• 20 March

  Merkel seeks distance from German bank merger

  

  Bloomberg German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it’s up to Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG executives to decide if their historic merger plans make sense, exposing divisions in the coalition. The plan to combine Germany’s two biggest lenders is a private business matter, Merkel said at the Global Solutions summit in Berlin, after the lenders announced talks on a deal ...

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