February, 2019

• 6 February

  London office deals beat Manhattan’s as buyers ignore Brexit

  

  Bloomberg London notched up 16.2 billion pounds ($21 billion) of investment in commercial real estate last year, beating out Manhattan for the top spot globally despite mounting anxiety about Brexit. In fact, the pound’s 13 percent decline against the dollar since Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union, together with enduring demand from tenants for office space, have proven ...

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• 6 February

  Data privacy changes may hit business: Google

  

  Bloomberg Google parent Alphabet Inc. warned that its business may be damaged by changing data privacy practices, new digital advertising polices and software bugs that leak user information. The company filed its annual report and added language that suggests it is adjusting to stepped-up regulatory scrutiny and evolving consumer attitudes toward data and privacy online. “Changes to our data privacy ...

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• 6 February

  UK set for sluggish growth even if Brexit goes well

  

  Bloomberg UK growth is set to be sluggish for the next few years even if a Brexit deal is secured, according to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. In a report on Wednesday, the think tank lowered its estimate for growth this year to 1.5 percent from 1.9 percent, and said output will pick up only slightly to ...

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• 6 February

  Daimler vows to cut costs to fight political, economic risks

  

  Bloomberg Daimler AG is preparing a “comprehensive” cost-cutting program to secure profitability as the German automaker fights through a US-China trade spat, slowing demand in Europe and North America and surging expenses to develop electric vehicles. The Mercedes-Benz manufacturer is stepping up efforts to shore up margins and counter pressures that are unlikely to blow over anytime soon. After a ...

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• 6 February

  Russia’s economic growth looks too good to be true

  

  Russia’s official statistics agency is displaying a feverish optimism under its new boss, Pavel Malkov, who took office in December. On Monday, the agency reported that in 2018, the country’s economy grew the fastest since 2012. Coming on top of a recent data revision that eliminated the 2016 recession, the recent numbers seem increasingly fishy, including to some government economists. ...

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• 6 February

  Italy plays with fire in bond markets

  

  Italy is not hanging about. Hot on the heels of its successful 16-year syndicated bond sale in mid-January, it has announced a new 30-year placement. Given the “fill your boots” hunger for all types of debt at the moment – from Turkey to Uzbekistan – it will probably get away okay. It’s certainly priced that way. But with the political ...

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• 6 February

  Churning advertising machine drowns out Google’s troubles

  In case you were worried, the advertising titans of the internet are doing just fine. Facebook Inc. showed that last week by reporting a 30 percent jump in fourth-quarter revenue from a year earlier. It was the lowest growth rate in the company’s short history, and the company has many challenges to keep growing, but it turns out that Facebook ...

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• 6 February

  US should start to work on a Green New Deal

  America needs a Green New Deal. That’s easy to say. Spelling out what it means, or ought to mean, is harder. Democrats leading this campaign intend the allusion to the first New Deal — FDR’s multi-front assault on the Great Depression — to convey urgency, ambition, commitment to social justice, and breadth of policy, except this time with the need ...

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• 6 February

  How India’s banks ran up a $7 billion phone bill

  

  For a capital-starved economy, India shows little urgency to extricate good money stuck in failed businesses. That was going to change after the adoption of a modern bankruptcy regime in May 2016. Alas, legal improvements notwithstanding, the culture of extending the life of bad loans to big businesses and pretending nothing is wrong with them is proving too hard to ...

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• 6 February

  Zero rates went from Japan exotica to global standard

  

  Marking the 20th anniversary of zero interest rates in Japan ought to be an exercise in humility. Like the eldest child of a large family, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) was on its own for a while. Those that followed — the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank (ECB), to name but two — had it a bit easier. Some ...

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