October, 2018

• 29 October

  This $30bn firm is breaking free

  

  Roper Technologies Inc.’s stock slide now looks like unfair punishment. The $30 billion company, which makes software for construction companies and legal firms as well as meter-reading tools, had slumped 11 percent in the month leading up to the release of its third-quarter results on October 26. That matched the decline in the S&P 500 Industrials index, which has been ...

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• 29 October

  When $57 billion a year just isn’t really enough

  

  Amundi SA, already Europe’s biggest fund manager, is on course to meet its self-imposed target of swelling assets under management by a net 50 billion euros ($57 billion) per year. Its cost-to-income ratio is best-in-class. And yet its shares dropped 6 percent on October 26 to their lowest level since March 2017. While asset growth decelerated in the third quarter ...

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• 29 October

  How Draghi can do Italy a massive favour

  Mario Draghi has a fine line to walk at last week’s press conference after the meeting of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) governing council. Bond investors will be watching closely to see how the ECB president responds to questions about Italy, and if there’s anything to be gleaned about whether future policy might be good or bad for the country’s ...

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• 29 October

  Iran is a serious threat to the financial system

  

  At many banks, November 5 will be a scary day. That’s when broad US sanctions are set to be re-imposed on Iran, thereby placing new pressure on its struggling economy and increasing the regime’s desperation for hard currency. A crucial side effect of this effort has gotten too little attention: Iran will likely attempt to skirt these sanctions through cyber-enabled ...

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• 29 October

  Deutsche Bank’s scars will take years to heal

  

  Germany’s Deutsche Bank AG and its British rival Barclays Plc kicked off the earnings season for Europe’s investment banks. The results weren’t great. Deutsche’s third-quarter trading revenues were dismal and its net income sank by two-thirds. Barclays’ investment bank fared better but still posted its lowest quarterly revenue in two years. Of the two, it’s Deutsche whose problems run deepest. ...

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• 29 October

  Netflix’s firing culture works for company’s adults

  

  Do you know the story of Patty McCord, Netflix’s original human relations chief? It’s legendary, and worth recounting in the wake of Wall Street Journal story on the company’s culture. McCord was one of Netflix Inc.’s earliest employees. She was chief executive Reed Hastings’s neighbour in Santa Cruz, California, and the two of them often carpooled to work. In 2004, ...

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• 29 October

  US stocks rebound on deal news; dollar rises, euro falls

  

  Bloomberg US stocks rose amid deal news, as major averages pared losses after a brutal month of selling. The dollar advanced versus the euro as political uncertainty hit Germany, while Treasuries edged lower. The S&P 500 headed for just its sixth advance in October and remains on track for its worst month since 2010. The Nasdaq indexes outperformed after IBM’s ...

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• 29 October

  Cboe set to shake up east European stock markets

  

  Bloomberg Cboe Global Markets Inc. is looking to shake up stock-market pricing when it starts handling shares of Polish, Hungarian and Czech companies next month in a move breaking up near-monopolies among eastern Europe’s largest exchanges. Cboe, the largest share-trading platform in western Europe since the acquisition of Bats Global Markets in 2017, has been meeting local brokerages in the ...

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• 29 October

  Italy studies bank options amid relief from S&P rating decision

  

  Bloomberg Italy’s populist leaders are focussing on how to shield the nation’s banks in case market pressure worsens amid a standoff with the European Union over the government’s budget plan. Premier Giuseppe Conte asked government entities to prepare options to help the lenders if the decline in the value of their holdings of government debt requires them to recapitalise, Corriere ...

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• 29 October

  HSBC shares rise as bank shows progress in taming its costs

  

  Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer John Flint delivered the kind of growth that investors have been waiting for. Flint, who took over this year, succeeded in posting third-quarter revenue gains that outpaced expenses: adjusted rev- enue climbed 9 percent while costs increased 2 percent. The shares in Hong Kong jumped after falling close to a two-year low last ...

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