November, 2018

• 17 November

  Indonesia is a mature kid on emerging block

  

  Indonesia has just delivered a strong – and unexpected – dose of confidence to foreign investors. The central bank was sufficiently worried about the rupiah’s slide that it raised interest rates for the sixth time this year. Only three of 31 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had predicted an increase. With the benchmark at 6 percent and a projected inflation ...

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• 17 November

  Amazon may have outsmarted itself with HQ2 tactics

  

  This season of “The Bachelor: Amazon” has ended. Next up may be the season of recriminations. It has been more than a year since Amazon.com Inc. trumpeted its hunt for “HQ2,” which was billed as a co-equal company headquarters on which Amazon pledged to spend more than $5 billion on construction and eventually hire as many as 50,000 people. More ...

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• 17 November

  Lime launches car-sharing service in Seattle

  

  Bloomberg San Francisco-based startup Lime has spent the last year scattering an assortment of brightly coloured scooters and bikes around American cities, arguing such services will reduce car use and traffic problems. But even Lime can’t quite sever ties with the automobile. Starting soon, the company will start spreading around Lime-branded cars, too. Lime is launching a car-sharing service in ...

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• 17 November

  ‘Self-driving cars won’t be ubiqitous for decades’

  

  Bloomberg The head of Alphabet Inc.’s autonomous vehicle unit gave a cautious outlook for the nascent industry, saying the technology won’t be ubiquitous for decades and that driverless vehicles will always have constraints. Waymo Chief Executive Officer John Krafcik said self-driving cars will require driver assistance for many years to come, and that he doesn’t envision a day when the ...

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• 17 November

  Tesla buys trucking firms for deliveries

  

  Bloomberg Elon Musk is apparently charting his way out of what he’s referred to as “delivery logistics hell” by making acquisitions and lining up contracts with trucking haulers. The Tesla Inc. CEO tweeted that Model 3s ordered in the US by the end of the month will be delivered by year-end. He wrote that using trucks instead of rail shaves ...

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• 17 November

  Google plans high-flying balloons to provide internet in Africa

  

  Bloomberg Bringing fast, widespread internet to rural Africa has proven vexing for companies that have tried—and largely failed—with strategies ranging from drones to satellites. Now, a sister company of Google says it has the answer: balloons. Loon, spun out of the search giant’s X innovation lab in July, is teaming up with Telkom Kenya Ltd. to build a network of ...

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• 17 November

  Powell: Solid economy faces headwinds as Fed mulls rates

  

  Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the US economy is strong but could face headwinds next year as policy makers weigh how far and fast to raise interest rates. “We have to be thinking about how much further to raise rates, and the pace at which we will raise rates,” Powell said during a question and answers session in ...

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• 17 November

  Chinese top bank fails to sell dollar bonds to US buyers

  

  Bloomberg China’s biggest lender pulled an offering of dollar bonds in the US market, adding to concern that American investor demand for Chinese offerings is dwindling amid the trade war. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) Ltd had been marketing three-year and five-year floating-rate notes through its New York branch, then decided not to proceed with pricing, according to people ...

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• 17 November

  Warren Buffett ramps up bets on banks

  

  Bloomberg Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc is betting big on banks. The billionaire’s company piled more than $13 billion into those stocks in the quarter, making Berkshire a major shareholder in four of the five largest US banks, according to a regulatory filing. Berkshire disclosed a new stake in JPMorgan Chase & Co and increased bets on Bank of America ...

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• 17 November

  Risky debt could magnify downturn: RBA’s Debelle

  

  Bloomberg Australia’s central bank No. 2 official Guy Debelle says risky borrowing is more likely to be an accelerator to an economic downturn rather than its source, in an address discussing the impact of lending curbs. “If a negative shock were to hit the Australian economy, particularly one that caused a sizeable rise in unemployment, then the risk on the ...

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