October, 2018

• 27 October

  S Korea’s weaker GDP growth raising hurdle to rate increase

  Bloomberg Weaker-than-expected growth in South Korea’s economy is raising fresh questions about whether the Bank of Korea will get its long-awaited interest rate hike next month. While stronger net exports helped sustain expansion, a second-straight quarterly decline in corporate capital investment and a sharp drop in hiring are evidence that the economy is losing steam. Gross domestic product expanded 0.6 ...

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• 27 October

  Alibaba used shoppers’ data to invent a spicy snickers bar

  

  Bloomberg Brands spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year trying to figure out what consumers want. Now Alibaba is offering to help by vacuuming data up from the legions of people shopping, searching and sharing on its various platforms and providing it to companies eager to create products that will resonate with Chinese consumers. In recent months, Alibaba has ...

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• 27 October

  Qualcomm seeks to cut patent claims from Apple license fight

  

  Bloomberg Qualcomm Inc. is trying to steer a big chuck of its billion-dollar dispute with Apple Inc. over the use of fundamental technology for mobile phones away from what it sees as a sideshow over patents. At a hearing, Qualcomm asked a federal judge in San Diego to throw out as moot all claims by Apple related to nine “handpicked” ...

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• 27 October

  ‘Trump reviewing tariffs on Canada steel, Aluminum’

  

  Bloomberg The US, Canada and Mexico remain at odds over metals tariffs, with Donald Trump’s envoy to Canada saying the president is reviewing them. Trump’s ambassador, Kelly Craft, argued the levies on steel and aluminum imports were designed to prevent overseas metal from entering America via its neighbors. “That is not something that is against Canada,” Craft said at an ...

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• 27 October

  US economy sees business-spending slump

  

  Bloomberg Consumers drove the US economy to better-than-expected growth in the third quarter, but a steep slowdown in business spending raised concerns about whether the strength in the expansion is sustainable. The 3.5 percent annualised gain in gross domestic product, following 4.2 percent, marked the best back-to-back quarters since 2014, according to Commerce Department report. The rise in consumer spending, ...

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• 27 October

  UK traders acquitted of rigging currency market

  Bloomberg Three former British traders were found not guilty of using an online chatroom to fix prices in the $5.1 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market. A federal jury in New York rejected the government’s claim that Richard Usher, Rohan Ramchandani and Christopher Ashton, a group known as “The Cartel,” rigged the market from 2007 to 2013 by coordinating trades and manipulating ...

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• 27 October

  Twitter exceeds sales projections in third quarter

  

  Bloomberg Twitter Inc. topped estimates for earnings and revenue in the third quarter amid higher spending from advertisers, marking a much-needed boost for the social-networking site after months of scrutiny from lawmakers and criticism about fake or offensive accounts. The shares rose in early trading. Monthly active users averaged 326 million, San Francisco-based Twitter said in a statement. That’s a ...

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• 27 October

  Swedish confidence dips on economic slowdown concern

  Bloomberg Swedes became more pessimistic as the central bank prepares to raise interest rates for the first time in seven years and politicians struggle to form a government more than a month after the nation’s inconclusive election. The economic tendency indicator fell to 108.0 in October from 111.2 in September, the National Institute of Economic Research said. Analysts surveyed by ...

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• 27 October

  America has lost its entrepreneurial edge

  

  Globalisation strikes again. The latest target is entrepreneurship. For decades, promoting startup firms through venture capital and other methods of business investment seemed a peculiarly American strength. It has nurtured countless tech firms, including titans such as Facebook, Google and Apple. Americans have been duly proud. It reinforced a sense of national exceptionalism, because other countries couldn’t easily duplicate it, ...

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• 27 October

  BT’s new boss goes into lion’s den

  

  BT Group Plc’s pick to replace its boss Gavin Patterson, a former marketing director at Procter & Gamble Co., is Philip Jansen, a former marketing director at Procter & Gamble Co. Indeed, it was Jansen – currently co-CEO at Worldpay Inc. – who first brought Patterson into the telecoms world, hiring him at the turn of the millennium for a ...

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