September, 2018

• 3 September

  Korean investor in talks for WeWork UK landmark

  

  Bloomberg Hana Financial Group Inc. is in talks to buy a landmark office property opposite the Bank of England that’s being transformed into a major WeWork Cos. co-working space, according to people with knowledge of the plan. Aermont Capital LLP, the owner of the building at One Poultry, is seeking a price of about 185 million pounds ($240 million), the ...

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• 3 September

  Netflix teen comedy helps Yakult yogurt drink fly off shelves

  Bloomberg Dairy producer Yakult Honsha Co. is finding that the power of product placement is so potent it works even when it’s mistaken. Viewers of Netflix’s new romantic comedy, “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before,’’ have noticed the main character’s sister drinking a yogurt out of a distinctive little bottle, and are talking about it on Twitter, according to ...

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• 3 September

  Nafta do-over distracts from big trade problem

  

  If President Donald Trump’s pronouncements are to be believed, the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) between the US, Canada and Mexico will soon be replaced by a bilateral US-Mexico trade agreement, presumably with a US-Canada agreement to follow. The actual changes to US-Mexico trade rules don’t look very substantial. The new agreement essentially implements a partial minimum wage for ...

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• 3 September

  Emerging market selloff looks contagious

  

  The difficulties for emerging markets have entered a new phase. What were once clearly country-specific crises, well contained within their borders, are bleeding across the world. To stem the slide in its currency Argentina raised its key rate to a whopping 60 percent last week, but the peso was still 30 percent weaker. Though Turkey is no closer to solving ...

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• 3 September

  Amazon doesn’t mind Trump, but Sanders strikes a nerve

  Donald Trump is the most powerful person in the world, and he has a loud megaphone. One word or tweet from him can move markets, or galvanize rage against a person or institution. Yet Amazon.com Inc. stayed quiet when the US president said the company crushes small businesses, may be violating anti-monopoly laws, dodges taxes and takes advantage of the ...

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• 3 September

  US and China need to compromise on trade

  The next round of US tariffs on Chinese imports — $200 billion worth — could come as soon as this week, after talks to avert them ended without resolution. China is set to retaliate promptly with duties on nearly everything it imports from the United States. Even as he signaled an initial deal with Mexico, President Donald Trump declared it ...

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• 3 September

  Argentina’s Macri scores own goal on sliding peso

  

  From debt vultures and cooked books to fiscal time bombs, Argentine President Mauricio Macri inherited quite the mess. In his three years of office, he’s handled most of these challenges remarkably well, drawing cheers from investors and his compatriots. Here was a decisive, business-friendly manager, talking transparency and free-market initiatives to end what might have been “the largest populist experiment” ...

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• 3 September

  Electric vehicles’ day will come suddenly

  

  This week, California’s state legislature approved a bill requiring the state to get 100 percent of its electricity from carbon-free sources by the year 2045. It’s a landmark for power sector decarbonization, and if Governor Jerry Brown signs the bill, it will require a transformation of the state’s energy system. California already gets 29 percent of its electricity from zero-carbon ...

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• 3 September

  Cash ban may have driven Indians away from banks

  

  The Indian central bank’s final tally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2016 demonetization drive, intended to take money derived from tax evasion out of circulation, showed that 99.3 percent of outlawed high-value banknotes had been returned. That’s a severe loss of face for officials, who had argued that holders of the cash would rather destroy it than return it to ...

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• 3 September

  $50bn fight over who owns South African central bank

  

  Bloomberg South Africa’s Lesetja Kganyago has a fight on his hands to protect the central bank’s $50 billion of reserves. More than eight months after the ruling African National Congress decided that the South African Reserve Bank should be state-owned, like most other central banks, the governor said his main concern remains to protect the regulator’s independence and mandate. But ...

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