September, 2018

• 15 September

  Super typhoon batters Philippines, kills three

  

  Bloomberg Super Typhoon Mangkhut battered the Philippines with gales and torrential rains, leaving at least three people dead and thousands homeless, triggering landslides and damaging an airport before heading toward China. The most powerful storm of the year ripped into Cagayan province in the northern Philippines with winds of up to 269 kilometres (167 miles) per hour. By US standards ...

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• 15 September

  Manafort pleads guilty, agrees to cooperate with Mueller

  

  Bloomberg Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team scored a significant victory as President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman pleaded guilty to conspiring against the US and agreed to cooperate in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The former campaign aide, Paul Manafort, admitted to a decade of crimes related to his work as a consultant for pro-Russia politicians ...

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• 15 September

  Europe’s populist godfather ‘gets a slap’

  

  Bloomberg After Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was castigated in the European Parliament this week over what he calls his “illiberal democracy,” the very public rebuke was hailed as a breakthrough for Europe. For opponents of the continent’s embrace of populism, finally there was a united show of strength against a leader who has railed against the European Union’s core, ...

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• 15 September

  Lula’s ‘pick’ jumps in presidential poll

  Bloomberg Leftist presidential candidate Fernando Haddad jumped in the first Datafolha opinion poll published since he officially replaced ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as the Workers’ Party candidate on Tuesday. In the poll published on Friday evening Haddad rose to 13 percent of vote intentions, up from 9 percent in the last poll conducted on September 10. Far-right ex-Army ...

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• 15 September

  Donald Trump’s economic record is yet to be written

  

  President Donald Trump claimed to have a “magic wand” that allowed him to push the economy’s growth rate above an annual rate of 4 percent in 2018’s second quarter. This is one of the president’s more colorful public statements taking credit for the economy’s performance. Such statements are as common as they are overstated. Trump isn’t alone in exaggerating the ...

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• 15 September

  India’s shadow-bank bust has a Lehman echo

  

  India is marking the 10th anniversary of the 2008 global financial crisis with its own mini-Lehman moment. True to script, ratings companies have belatedly realised that the IL&FS Group — Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd. and its associates — is woefully short of liquidity, with about $500 million in repayments coming due in the second half of its fiscal ...

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• 15 September

  A $100 million haircut for the buyout crowd

  It’s rare to see a deal suffering a price cut after it’s been signed – even rarer when there’s a big equity fundraising on the side. Last week, private equity firm Advent International Plc agreed a maximum 17 percent snip to the price of Mondo Minerals BV, the Dutch talc producer it agreed to sell to British chemicals group Elementis ...

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• 15 September

  Why China’s fracking hopes may hit the rocks

  Could China’s oil and gas industry be on the brink of a revolution? That’s one interpretation of the government’s shakeup of regulations on petroleum production this month. The introduction of drill-it-or-lose-it rules and a possible extension of subsidies for unconventional gas output could end up dismembering sprawling industry leader PetroChina Co. and creating a new sector of independent upstream producers ...

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• 15 September

  China’s imperial growth delusion just won’t die

  

  The big state-owned Chinese enterprise is back. But this time, it isn’t looking sturdy enough to prop up the economy. As growth stumbles, Beijing is falling back on a tried and trusted solution: using large, government-backed companies to spur activity. That’s squeezing out private and small firms. The economy certainly merits concern. Trade frictions and Beijing’s crackdown on the underbelly ...

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• 15 September

  Apple’s ‘death blow’ to phone carriers

  

  Each new iPhone is usually good news for mobile network operators. The latest Apple Inc. device always comes with upgrades that make it easier to play games, watch films and download reams of data. More data means bigger phone bills. There’s a chance, though, that the arrival of the next generation of iPhones might not be so welcome. That’s because ...

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