December, 2018

• 22 December

  China needs a new pledge to its economic reform

  Fourty years ago, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping launched the most dramatic economic transformation in history by encouraging his countrymen to “emancipate” their minds and “seek truth from facts.” The reforms that followed — he called it socialism with Chinese characteristics — were stunning in their impact. China’s GDP today is more than 80 times bigger than it was at the ...

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• 22 December

  India’s shadow-bank risks put even China in the shade

  

  Why do you call them shadow banks? That’s a criticism I’ve heard often since I started chronicling the troubled world of India’s nonbank finance companies following the high-profile bust of infrastructure lender IL&FS Group in early September. Some readers saw the characterisation as an attempt to equate India’s pedigreed financiers of mortgages and consumer loans with China’s peer-to-peer lenders and ...

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• 22 December

  There’s something worse than running the Deutsche Bank

  

  Juergen Fitschen probably thought life would become a bit calmer when he stepped down as co-chief executive of Deutsche Bank AG in 2016. Later that year he was nominated supervisory board chairman of German electronics retailer Ceconomy AG, where the 70-year-old now collects a salary of 240,000 euros, a fraction of his Deutsche days. And then, all hell broke loose. ...

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• 22 December

  Facebook can’t seem to learn from its mistakes

  

  Nine months after a scandal erupted over Facebook Inc.’s open borders of user information, those borders are in the news again. The New York Times reported that after Facebook tightened rules in 2015 to limit the account information that could be hooked into outside companies’ apps and websites, the social network made many exceptions and some previously made special deals ...

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• 22 December

  LG plans selling TVs that roll up like posters in 2019

  

  Bloomberg LG Electronics Inc. plans to begin selling big-screen TVs next year that can be rolled up and put away like a poster, the centerpiece of an effort to revive an ailing business, according to a person familiar with the matter. The envisioned 65-inch TVs will retract automatically at the touch of a button like a garage door, the person ...

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• 22 December

  Zoox wins first permit to ferry public in robot rides

  

  Bloomberg Driverless car startup Zoox Inc. became the first company to win approval to transport members of the public in its driverless test vehicles in California, according to a statement from the California Public Utilities Commission. While there are more than 60 companies with permits to test autonomous vehicles in California, they are restricted to carrying employees and contractors. With ...

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• 22 December

  SoftBank leads funding in flexible car-leasing app

  

  Bloomberg SoftBank Group Corp. just led a $385 million funding round for a flexible-leasing app that makes cars more accessible to Uber drivers and other gig-economy workers. Fair, led by TrueCar Inc. co-founder Scott Painter, has continued to grow since buying lease contracts in January from Uber Technologies Inc.’s shuttered subprime-lending unit. Fair has an exclusive contract with Uber in ...

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• 22 December

  Cycling app Zwift gets $120 million in esports push

  

  Bloomberg Zwift, a company that gives cyclists the opportunity to compete in virtual-reality races, has raised $120 million to help them set up an esports league and further their expansion into running. Based in Long Beach, California, Zwift has built software that lets riders simulate outdoor training — such as cycling up a mountain — from their living room. Customers ...

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• 22 December

  Trump discusses firing Fed’s Powell after latest rate hike

  

  Bloomberg President Donald Trump has discussed firing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell as his frustration with the central bank chief intensified following this week’s interest-rate increase and months of stock-market losses, according to four people familiar with the matter. Advisers close to Trump aren’t convinced he would move against Powell and are hoping that the president’s latest bout of anger ...

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• 22 December

  Money laundering crisis more painful than 2008 meltdown for Danske

  

  Bloomberg What’s worse for a bank, the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression or the biggest money laundering scandal in European history? According to Danske Bank, which has lived through both, it’s the latter. The bank’s acting chief executive, Jesper Nielsen, says that during the global meltdown of 2008, concerns centered on things like “greed,” which was obviously bad. ...

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