February, 2019

• 3 February

  Discipline in slowdown is Samsung’s silver lining

  

  Samsung Electronics company’s fourth-quarter earnings tell a tale of falling demand for technology products and components. Revenue dropped 10 percent – the most in almost four years – with operating profit down 29 percent, the worst decline since 2016. Chips were the major reason for the weakness, the South Korean company told investors. Fourth quarter earnings of the company were ...

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• 3 February

  Europe shouldn’t relax its antitrust regulations

  The European Union’s governments are encouraging the European Commission to weaken its antitrust standards to promote “continental champions.” Europe, they say, needs larger companies to compete on an equal footing with US and Chinese giants. This idea is a mistake, and it rests on an economic fallacy. Big firms aren’t necessarily more efficient than smaller ones, especially when they’re big ...

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• 3 February

  May delays her moment of Brexit reckoning

  

  If Britain’s Parliament were the final arbiter of Brexit, last week vote would have been historic. It would have been a crowning achievement for Prime Minister Theresa May: Leavers and Remainers, Conservatives and Labour Party members debated for six hours and voted seven times before a majority finally said what they want to happen. It wasn’t any of that. The ...

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• 3 February

  Siemens boss goes off the rails in Twitter rant

  

  A furious rage-tweet is not the best way for a CEO to get merger approval from competition regulators. Yet Siemens boss Joe Kaeser indulged in exactly that, blasting Margrethe Vestager – Europe’s top antitrust official – as “backward” and overly technocratic because of her likely rejection of his company’s rail merger with France’s Alstom SA. “It must be bitter if ...

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• 3 February

  Apple needs to sharpen its post-iPhone pitch

  

  Apple Inc. doesn’t want investors to fixate any longer on the iPhone, the world-changing product that delivers about two-thirds of the company’s revenue. Nope. It’s over it. The iPhone is bo-ring. Not coincidentally, the iPhone is boring because sales are going in reverse. As the company predicted, Apple said that iPhone revenue dropped 14.9 percent in its fiscal first quarter ...

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• 3 February

  Defections unlikely to hurt profits, says Danske CEO

  

  Bloomberg Danske Bank A/S isn’t expecting to see financial losses as a result of the client flight triggered by its money laundering scandal, according to its interim chief executive officer, Jesper Nielsen. The bank said it lost about 11,000 retail customers in Denmark, net, last year. It also pointed to “negative impact” of the laundering case on its corporate clients ...

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• 3 February

  ECB’s Visco warns of weaker growth

  

  Bloomberg Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco joined his European counterparts in signalling that economic growth will be much weaker than predicted, warning of the implications for euro-area inflation. “The prospects for the Italian economy are less favourable today than they were a year ago,” Visco, who sits on the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, said in a speech to ...

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• 3 February

  Natixis seeks sale of Korean derivatives

  

  Bloomberg Natixis SA, the French bank that had sought growth in risky trading businesses, is looking to sell the portfolio of complex Korean derivatives that blew up in the fourth quarter, losing almost $300 million, according to people familiar with the matter. The firm has approached potential buyers including JPMorgan Chase & Co. and BNP Paribas SA to gauge their ...

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• 3 February

  Powell marks one year as Federal Reserve chairman

  

  Bloomberg Jerome Powell this week marks his first year as chairman as the Federal Reserve under pressure to deliver on the commitment of his opening day to explain “what we are doing and why we are doing it.” Powell hosts a town hall meeting with educators in Washington on Wednesday, a day after he celebrates his anniversary. He does so ...

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• 3 February

  Australian banks set for biggest upheaval from probe

  

  Bloomberg Australia’s scandal-plagued banks are set for their biggest upheaval in decades as a wide-ranging inquiry into misconduct recommends how the nation’s financial industry should atone for wrongdoings. In its final report to be released in Canberra, the government-appointed Royal Commi- ssion could propose financial firms be broken up to avoid conflicts of interest, push for changes to pay and ...

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