December, 2018

• 8 December

  Stress over Brexit issue isn’t just in your head

  

  The uncertainty of the ongoing Brexit drama is taking an emotional toll on the British public. Since the original vote in 2016, there has been a 13.7 percent increase in prescriptions for antidepressants relative to other drugs. Political chaos has consequences for public health. Indeed, the results of a new study suggest that people subjected to long periods of intense ...

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• 8 December

  Facebook’s exposure to risky revenue

  

  What’s a troubled social network to do? Facing a crisis of confidence, Facebook appears to struggle to take actions on its own, whether out of uncertainty or stubbornness, and it’s not clear a divided Congress and the Trump administration could agree on regulatory actions to force its hand. One simple first step would be a bit more financial transparency. Inspired ...

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• 8 December

  Doctors, economists have a prescription for Grab

  

  GrabTaxi Holdings Pte has a lot of smart people on its payroll. Let’s hope the transportation startup spends more time listening to its economists. Yeah I know, startup and economics in the same sentence. Go-Jek Indonesia PT’s entry into Singapore was inevitable the moment Grab bought out the local business of Uber Technologies Inc. It already had its sights on ...

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• 8 December

  Retailers try payment apps to sidestep $90bn in third-party swipe fees

  

  Bloomberg Retailers have been trying for years to escape the clutches of the credit-card companies, which this year will levy more than $90 billion in swipe fees on an industry already struggling to navigate the shift online. Some believe the answer lies in payment apps. While shoppers have largely shunned mobile payments offered by third-party providers like Apple Inc., retailers ...

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• 8 December

  Scooter-rental startup Skip gets $100 million in debt

  

  Bloomberg Skip Transport, one of two companies that won licenses to rent scooters on the streets of San Francisco, received $100 million in debt and is seeking more funding from investors, said three people familiar with the matter. While it explores an equity deal, Skip plans to use the debt on a project to design and build scooters that would ...

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• 8 December

  Apple’s HomePod heads to China

  

  Bloomberg Apple Inc. said its HomePod wireless speaker will go on sale in China next year, potentially beating Amazon.com Inc. and Google to the world’s most-populous nation. On its website in China, Apple added a banner that said the speaker will go on sale in “early 2019”. The Hong Kong website announced a similar move. The speaker will cost HK ...

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• 8 December

  BYD plans battery IPO amid electric-car boom

  

  Bloomberg BYD Co., the electric-car maker backed by Warren Buffett, plans to list its battery business by 2022 to raise funds to expand as the global auto industry transitions away from the traditional combustion engine. The listing will occur sometime by the end of 2022 and the company hasn’t decided yet where the shares will be trading, Chairman Wang Chuanfu ...

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• 8 December

  ECB set to give long-term loans to banks next year

  

  Bloomberg The European Central Bank will offer new long-term loans to banks next year while going slow on interest rates to underpin the region’s increasingly fragile upswing, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. Almost three-quarters of respondents said they expect an announcement of such funding by March, to be handed out three months later. A deposit-rate hike is still ...

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• 8 December

  Big deflation sparks talk of no rate hike in Brazil during 2019

  

  Bloomberg Bets that Brazil may hold interest rates at a record low throughout 2019 gained strength after the country posted its biggest monthly deflation in 1-1/2 years. Consumer prices measured by the benchmark IPCA index fell 0.21 percent in November, three times as much as economists expected. Swap rates on futures contracts, a barometer of expected interest-rate decisions, dove following ...

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• 8 December

  Canadian banks’ record earnings driven by gains abroad

  

  Bloomberg Canada’s eight big banks extended their record earnings streak this year, posting a 7.5 percent jump in annual profit fuelled by operations outside their home turf. Net income for the companies totalled C$45.9 billion ($34.3 billion) in the fiscal year ended October 31. Toronto-Dominion Bank and Bank of Montreal profited from their US consumer-lending divisions, while Bank of Nova ...

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