The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.
China may be suffering from President Donald Trump’s trade war. A substantial number of Chinese companies are laying off staff, cutting wages and reducing capital expenditures. Prices are being slashed on goods subject to tariffs. And China’s export growth has slowed. Of course, US consumers and manufacturers will also get hurt by the tariffs. And there’s a chance that China’s ...
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December, 2018
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25 December
Zuckerberg uses tech for his own ends
The idea that a company as powerful and autocratic as Facebook Inc. would ever dive into crypto-currencies has always seemed a bit like the Death Star deciding to throw a staff Christmas party. Whether it’s the Bitcoin model itself or the more corporate-friendly efforts to exploit the blockchain approach (distributed databases across networks within a business or industry) it’s been ...
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25 December
MYOB can do better than KKR’s bid. But it won’t
KKR & Co. looks like it’s low-balling MYOB Group Ltd. Having initially offered A$3.70 per share for the Australian accounting-software maker, the private equity firm cut its bid to A$3.40. That’s still a premium to recent trading prices and the A$3.15 it paid to acquire a 17.6 percent stake. Yet it’s a discount to peers. KKR’s A$2 billion ($1.4 billion) ...
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25 December
EU truce over budgets isn’t such a good idea
The governments of France and Italy, under pressure from voters to change their policies, have put forward rule-breaking budgets for next year, and the European Union (EU) has decided to let things slide. Under the current testing circumstances, this flexibility on enforcing the rules is understandable — but it isn’t necessarily wise. To be sure, Italy’s populist administration has climbed down ...
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25 December
Assault on India’s central bank autonomy is starting
After sending two pesky central bank governors packing in a little over two years, Indian bureaucrats have turned their attention to unwinding the monetary authority’s autonomy. Their first move, unveiled last week, is an innocuous – even laudable – infusion of Rs 41,000 crore ($5.9 billion) into troubled state-run lenders, bumping up this fiscal year’s outlay for bank recapitalization by ...
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25 December
Give everyone a reason to fight climate disaster
Avoiding the devastating consequences of global warming means taking steps that will incur costs now. Those costs can be painful, as illustrated vividly by the social unrest in France, triggered in part by President Emmanuel Macron’s since-rescinded fuel tax. For some, such as the New York Times’s Bret Stephens, the lesson is clear: Forget reducing carbon dioxide emissions, because people ...
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25 December
Amazon flexes well-defined muscle on private labels
In my medicine cabinet, I have a jar of petroleum jelly from Walgreens that looks like the iconic Vaseline container. You probably also own store-brand versions of familiar items — also called generics or “private label†products. The pull tends to be lower cost, but Walmart, Macy’s and other big retailers have been seeking to create private-label products with a ...
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25 December
Nikkei enters bear market to extend global equity rout
Bloomberg The Nikkei 225 Stock Average slid into a bear market, as a global equity rout continued unabated in the last week of the year, with renewed turmoil in Washington rattling investors. The yen and Japanese bonds rose. The Japanese benchmark fell 5 percent on Tuesday, widening its drop to 21 percent from its October 2 peak, taking its cue ...
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25 December
Dollar exposed to dysfunction in US
Bloomberg Mounting political risks from Washington are adding to reasons for traders to be bearish about the dollar as the market hurtles towards the end of 2018. Most forecasters were already predicting that the greenback, which this month touched its strongest level in a year and a half, would be in for a rougher time in 2019. Much of that ...
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25 December
Trump rips Fed as economy’s only problem
Bloomberg US President Donald Trump renewed his attacks on the Federal Reserve, commenting publicly on the central bank for the first time following last week’s interest-rate hike and reports he has discussed firing Chairman Jerome Powell. “The only problem our economy has is the Fed. They don’t have a feel for the Market, they don’t understand necessary Trade Wars or ...
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