December, 2018

• 15 December

  Brexit drives UK housing to weakest in six years

  

  Bloomberg The Brexit battering of the UK housing market has no end in sight. An index of prices by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors slipped in November to the weakest level since 2012, while the outlook for pricing and sales for the next three month slumped. The persistent uncertainty around Britain’s impending exit from the European Union was the ...

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• 15 December

  Blackstone, KKR vie for $1bn Cosco terminal

  

  Bloomberg Cosco Shipping Holdings Co’s sale of a container terminal in Long Beach, California has drawn interest from potential buyers including Blackstone Group LP and KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. EQT Partners and an arm of Macquarie Group Ltd have also been studying a deal for the asset, the people said, asking not to be identified ...

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• 15 December

  J&J ready to pay more than $400 million in hip cases

  

  Bloomberg Johnson & Johnson is willing to pay more than $400 million to settle some of the thousands of consumers’ allegations that the company sold defective artificial hips and hid the health risks of the devices, people familiar with the negotiations said. The world’s largest health-care products maker has settled, or is in the process of settling, about 3,300 of ...

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• 15 December

  Second Brexit vote gaining traction to end gridlock

  

  Bloomberg In the corridors of the UK Parliament, an idea that four months ago seemed laughable is now being seriously discussed. Is another referendum a way out of the Brexit deadlock? Speaking privately, some ministers raise it unprompted. At a press conference, leaders of the smaller opposition parties urged the government to consider it as a contingency worth preparing for. ...

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• 15 December

  New army in Kosovo raises Balkan stakes

  

  Bloomberg Kosovo lawmakers adopted a set of laws to upgrade its lightly armed troops into a formidable force, which neighbouring Serbia sees as security threat and an obstacle to normalising ties between the two Balkan nations. Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic demanded an urgent meeting of the United Nations Security Council after the Kosovo’s parliament ignored objections from ethnic Serb ...

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• 15 December

  Yellow Vests protest started in relative calm

  

  Bloomberg A fifth weekend of protests by France’s Yellow Vests movement started in relative calm in Paris, with police arresting several dozen people in the capital compared with hundreds a week earlier. As protesters gathered in front of the opera house and on the Champs-Elysees avenue in central Paris, police used tear gas to prevent a small breakaway group from ...

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• 15 December

  Lankan court rules against election plan

  Bloomberg Sri Lanka’s top court ruled against President Maithripala Sirisena’s plan to dissolve the island nation’s parliament and call a new national vote, extending a political crisis that has roiled the island nation since late October. The Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional a presidential notice to dissolve parliament before a period of four-and-a-half years from its first sitting unless the ...

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• 15 December

  Butina admits conspiring as Kremlin agent

  

  Bloomberg Maria Butina pleaded guilty to acting as an undeclared Russian agent in the US and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, advancing an inquiry into Russia’s efforts to build back-channels to politically connected Americans. The 30-year-old gun enthusiast operated as a Kremlin agent as she befriended National Rifle Association leaders (NRA) and influential US conservatives, she admitted in federal court ...

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• 15 December

  Swedish oppn leader calls for quick resolution

  

  Bloomberg Swedish opposition leader Ulf Kristersson, the man most likely to be asked to form a new government after Stefan Lofven’s second defeat in parliament, is calling for a quick resolution to the country’s political stalemate, warning that the chances of a snap election are now rising. “Ultimately, we are heading at quite a high speed toward a new election,” ...

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• 15 December

  The Fed’s latest worry

  

  Pay attention to the financial markets. If the Great Recession and 2008-09 financial crisis taught us anything, that was it. Until then, the Federal Reserve had focused mainly on fighting inflation and unemployment. What we learned is that overborrowing, shaky mortgages and inflated stock and home prices could also plunge the economy into crisis. Predictably, then, economists and business executives ...

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