December, 2018

• 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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• 22 December

  Carney braces for final year with BOE

  

  Bloomberg Mark Carney is headed into his last full year at the helm of the Bank of England, and it could be his most turbulent yet. In a tenure that has seen the Scottish referendum, two general elections and the Brexit vote, the BOE governor is now in charge of keeping the ship steady as the divorce from the European ...

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• 22 December

  Wall Street lenders stuck with $1.6bn unsold loans

  Bloomberg A rout in the once-hot market for risky corporate loans has some of Wall Street’s largest banks stuck with at least $1.6 billion of unwanted leveraged buyout debt. Banks including Barclays Plc, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. — among the top providers of loans for LBOs — have struggled in recent weeks to sell loans ...

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• 22 December

  Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse targeted by EU bond probe

  

  Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, Credit Suisse Group AG and Credit Agricole SA were targeted by a European Union probe into a suspected cartel for sovereign-bond trading. The European Commission sent the banks antitrust complaints, saying they may have exchanged “commercially sensitive information and coordinated on prices” on trading of US dollar supra-sovereign, sovereign and agency bonds via online chatrooms between ...

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• 19 December

  Digital economy can contribute $3 trillion to Arab GDP growth

  

  ABU DHABI / WAM Digital economy can contribute more than $3 trillion to Arab GDP growth, according to key recommendations and insights from the First Arab Digital Economy Conference, which concluded in the UAE capital on Wednesday. The importance of adopting the vision of the Arab digital economy for the growth opportunities of the Arab countries’ GDP is in direct ...

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• 19 December

  Adnoc awards OMV 5% stake in Ghasha project

  

  ABU DHABI / WAM The Abu Dhabi government and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) have awarded Austria’s OMV a 5 percent stake in the Ghasha ultra-sour gas concession that comprises the Hail, Ghasha, Dalma, Nasr, Sarb and Mubarraz sour gas fields. OMV, which joins Italy’s Eni and Germany’s Wintershall as Adnoc’s partners in the concession, will contribute 5 ...

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• 19 December

  Syria: US to withdraw troops after IS ‘defeat’

  

  Bloomberg Donald Trump declared victory over IS, as officials said he’s ordered a full withdrawal of US forces from Syria in a sharp reversal of American policy that appeared to take the Pentagon by surprise. The US military is working to quickly carry out Trump’s order, according to the officials, but it wasn’t clear how soon the approximately 2,000 troops ...

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