February, 2019

• 16 February

  India should call a truce in its US trade conflict

  

  US and Indian officials met in New Delhi last week for what promises to be a tetchy summit. The trade relationship between their countries has never been easy. The fact that India has a $22-billion trade surplus with the US — despite running a deficit with many of its other major trading partners — is particularly annoying to the Trump ...

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• 16 February

  Japan’s economy isn’t hopeless

  

  Stop seeing Japan as a wasteland. The country’s economy, the world’s third largest, still matters. Japan isn’t stuck in a hopeless demographic-driven hole without escape. Rather, the three decades since the Bubble burst have had their ups and downs. Look at the fourth-quarter gross domestic product numbers. They aren’t brilliant; they aren’t terrible. What makes them interesting is their ordinariness: ...

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• 16 February

  Apple doesn’t need to remake video to succeed at it

  

  In Apple Inc.’s effort to become more than the iPhone company, it has become savvier about pitching people apps, started a digital music subscription, and created an app for reading news. Apple is still the iPhone company despite those tactics. But consumers don’t have to wait long to see the next steps in Apple’s attempted transformation. Among the company’s coming ...

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• 16 February

  Shell eyes limit to ‘how clean oil output can be’ in climate push

  

  Bloomberg There’s only so much you can do to make oil and gas production cleaner. That was a key realization behind Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s decision to set targets to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions not just from its own operations, but also from the products it sells which are consumed by others. So far, it’s the only oil major to do ...

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• 16 February

  Trump, Xi hail progress in trade talks as tariff deadline nears

  

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump hailed progress made in trade talks with China this week, saying he may extend a tariff truce and take steps to sell a potential deal with opposition lawmakers. Trump’s comments signal the two sides may be approaching a deal after two days of high-level talks in Beijing. The two countries said they are working towards an ...

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• 16 February

  Go-Jek fields bank pitches amid $3bn funding campaign

  

  Bloomberg Go-Jek, Indonesia’s most valuable startup, is choosing an adviser to help with fundraising as it expands rapidly in the competitive Southeast Asian ride-hailing industry, people with knowledge of the matter said. The firm recently asked investment banks to pitch for a role working on its ongoing financing round,. Go-Jek could seek to bring in as much as $2 billion ...

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• 16 February

  Rate-cut fervour sees funds favouring India’s short bonds

  

  Bloomberg India’s shorter-maturity bonds are set to outperform as traders boost the odds the central bank may cut interest rates again as soon as its April meeting. That’s one of the reasons asset managers such as DHFL Pramerica Asset Managers Pvt. and HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co. favor the front-end of the yield curve. At the same time, escalating concern ...

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• 16 February

  Australia in tree-planting binge to help meet climate targets

  

  Bloomberg Australia aims to plant a billion trees by 2050 as part of a new forestry plan the government says will help the country meet its Paris Agreement climate targets. A sod-turning spree on that scale would contribute to the removal of 18 million tons of greenhouse gas per year by 2030 in a country currently producing in excess of ...

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• 16 February

  Singapore economy grows at slower pace

  Bloomberg Singapore’s economy grew at a slower pace in the fourth quarter than previously estimated, a sign that US-China trade tensions and weaker global demand are starting to bite. Gross domestic product (GDP) increased an annualized 1.4 percent from the prior quarter, lower than the government’s earlier projection of 1.6 percent and the median forecast of 1.5% in a Bloomberg ...

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• 16 February

  Thousands fired from $30bn Bangladesh garment sector

  

  Bloomberg Garment worker Rabeya started protesting on the streets of Dhaka in early January to pressure her employer — one of Bangladesh’s major suppliers to European clothing giant H&M — to pay a new minimum wage for its workers. On February 9, she said two company officials from Moon Readywears Ltd. told her not to bother returning to her job ...

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