January, 2019

• 30 January

  Tesco is playing with fire by cutting jobs

  In Britain’s retail apocalypse, culling staff might seem like an obvious course of action for hard-pressed store chains. But cut too deep, and the damage inflicted on the business can be even more devastating than Brexit-induced nervousness. Tesco is looking to eliminate up to 9,000 jobs – about half of which could be shifted elsewhere in the company – as ...

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• 30 January

  With China, US needs to verify but trust

  With high-stakes trade talks set to resume in Washington, US officials say any deal with China hinges on how it can be enforced. That is indeed a key issue. But to have any hope of success, the US can’t be entirely worried about whether China might cheat. It also needs to consider what conditions would best encourage Beijing to comply. ...

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• 30 January

  UK economy needs a reboot no matter Brexit outcome

  

  “I’m really enjoying the season finale of the UK,” quipped Irish software engineer Damian Sullivan on Twitter. His joke may not be far off the mark. Brexit negotiations are looking more and more like the type of destructive brinkmanship that the US has seen in recent years. But the stakes are much higher in the UK — rather than just ...

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• 30 January

  China’s lenders are desperate for capital

  

  In the past decade, China has relied primarily on credit growth to fund its economic ambitions. The country’s banks are now feeling the constraints of this lending binge and need to raise a lot of capital over the next couple of years. The way China handles this challenge will determine its economic health. With 267 trillion yuan ($39.4 trillion) of ...

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• 30 January

  Why Facebook can’t resist integrating WhatsApp

  

  Facebook Inc.’s “family” of apps is about to get even closer. The New York Times reported that Facebook is planning to more closely integrate the apps it owns, including its Messenger and WhatsApp instant chat services, as well as photo-and-video-focused Instagram. The decision is both an inevitable end to independence for properties that Facebook acquired and initially left largely alone, ...

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• 30 January

  SocGen plans investment bank job cuts to save $114mn a year

  

  Bloomberg Societe Generale SA is making a last-ditch effort to boost its performance after a trading slump threatened Chief Executive Officer Frederic Oudea’s targets. The French bank — recovering from regulatory probes that cost it billions of euros and a management reshuffle — plans to cut jobs in less profitable investment banking businesses to save at least 100 million euros ...

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• 30 January

  Swedbank Estonia CEO among ECB member nominees

  

  Bloomberg The head of Swedbank’s Estonian unit Robert Kitt is among three nominees who are in the running to replace central bank chief Ardo Hansson as the Baltic nation’s voting member on the European Central Bank’s Governing Council. The nominees, listed by the central bank’s eight-member supervisory board, also include deputy Governor Madis Muller and senior Finance Ministry official Marten ...

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• 30 January

  Metro Bank plunges on misclassified assets, capital concern

  

  Bloomberg Metro Bank Plc fell the most since going public after applying an incorrectly low risk weighting to parts of its loan book, with the British lender’s chief saying he doesn’t know how long the mortgages in question had been wrongly classified. The shares plunged as much as 39 percent and the bank’s bonds also fell on concern it will ...

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• 30 January

  Brexit uncertainty may split BOE policy makers on how to respond

  

  Bloomberg Don’t be fooled by the Bank of England’s (BOE) recent unanimity — the debate will become more heated. While Brexit has split Britain down the middle, policy makers have voted 9-0 on interest rates for the past four meetings and generally stayed quiet on the outlook as the UK’s impeding divorce from the European Union becomes more fraught. Governor ...

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• 30 January

  ‘Blockchain is making progress outside crypto’

  

  Bloomberg It may take a few years for blockchain’s impact to be felt meaningfully, but it will provide some advancements in certain areas even as cryptocurrencies falter, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. “Blockchain isn’t going to reinvent the global payment system, but it will provide marginal improvements,” JPMorgan’s chair of global research, Joyce Chang, said in an interview. “The ...

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