July, 2016

• 28 July

  Qatar Airways to lift stake in British Airways owner

  

    Bloomberg Qatar Airways Ltd. will further raise its stake in British Airways owner IAG SA, adding to its holding after the shares plunged in the wake of the Brexit vote, according to people familiar with the matter. The state-owned carrier, already IAG’s largest investor, will boost its holding to about 20 percent from 15.7 percent, said the people, who …

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• 28 July

  UK approves London City Airport’s $450mn expansion

  

    Bloomberg The U.K. government approved the expansion of London City Airport — a project held up by former Mayor Boris Johnson — as new Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond looks to underline the city’s role in the global economy in the aftermath of Britain’s vote to exit the European Union. The 344 million-pound ($450 million) plan for the …

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• 28 July

  Inequality key to downturn of Russian retail demand

  

    Bloomberg Russian consumer numbers don’t add up. A record slide in retail sales for 18 months has been immune to gains in employment and wages, improving confidence and inflation at less than half last year’s level. Widening wealth disparity may be the key to the unprecedented collapse in demand, according to Alfa Bank and VTB Capital. “We attribute the …

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• 28 July

  Carrefour Q1 profit beats estimates on Europe

  

    Bloomberg Carrefour SA, France’s largest retailer, reported higher first-half earnings and maintained its full-year outlook as European revenue held up despite bad weather. Recurring operating income rose 5.3 percent at constant exchange rates to 706 million euros ($781 million), the eighth straight increase, Boulogne-Billancourt-based Carrefour said on Thursday in a statement. Analysts predicted 683.5 million euros, the average of …

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• 28 July

  Housing boom spurs Canada lumber surge

  

    Bloomberg With Americans buying more new homes than at any time since the recession, the cost of the wood used to build them is getting a lot more expensive. Lumber prices are off to their biggest rally in more than a decade, touching a 19-month high last week as demand increased from builders. But almost a third of all …

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• 28 July

  Komatsu’s Q1 profit falls 52% as demand droops

  

    Bloomberg Komatsu Ltd., the Japanese maker of construction and mining machinery that last week offered to buy Joy Global Inc. for about $2.89 billion, said first-quarter profit fell 52 percent as demand languished in strategic markets such as the Middle East and Indonesia and the stronger yen crimped overseas revenue. Net income fell to 15.6 billion yen ($149 million) …

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• 28 July

  Airbnb rentals planned by Japan firm on tourist boom

    Bloomberg Star Mica Co., a Tokyo-listed real-estate company founded by an ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker, plans to double returns from apartments using Airbnb to house tourists from abroad. The company owns about 2,500 apartments mostly in Tokyo, and is considering renting some of them to overseas visitors from as early as next year using services such as that …

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• 28 July

  Schneider raises margin on construction improvement

    Bloomberg Schneider Electric SE raised its earnings forecast for the year on improving construction markets in the U.S. and Europe with the exception of the U.K., where the company is expecting a slowdown following the Brexit vote. The world’s biggest maker of low- and medium-voltage equipment increased the target for adjusted Ebita margin improvement to 0.6 to 0.9 percentage …

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• 28 July

  Brooklyn office developers chasing tech tenants face slowdown

  

    Bloomberg Developers racing to turn Brooklyn into a thriving technology office market may be finding Manhattan a less-fruitful target for poaching tenants. Leasing in Manhattan by tech, advertising, media and information tenants — known to real estate brokers by the acronym TAMI — fell in the second quarter to the lowest level in more than three years, according to …

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• 28 July

  FB pushes more people to an app they didn’t choose

  

      AP Facebook is once again getting pushy about how people message one another. Two years ago, the social-media giant forced its users to adopt its Messenger app for direct communication, a change it enforced by deactivating messages in the main Facebook app and steering users to the app. There was an uproar, some users thought Messenger violated their …

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