September, 2018

• 1 September

  US airports opening video game parlours for stuck travellers

  

  Bloomberg As airport time killers, the race for novel concessions inside the terminal is becoming more, well, playful. Especially when it comes to mollifying less-than-happy passengers. Last month, the first US airport video game lounges opened with three dozen Microsoft Corp. XBox rigs at Dallas-Fort Worth International, while John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York is hosting the first ...

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• 1 September

  The real importance of Trump’s Mexico move

  

  The best thing that can be said about President Trump’s latest trade initiative is that it moves the US back towards the kind of agreements Trump unwisely blew up when he became president. So, two cheers for Trump’s revamped free-trade agreement with Mexico and the one he may get soon with Canada. He wants to rebrand the package, of course, ...

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• 1 September

  Shale dividend for utilities is ending

  

  Maybe it’s utilities Elon Musk should have been courting for his take-Tesla-private fling. In a power-sector workshop convened by Bloomberg New Energy Finance in June, more than two-thirds of industry attendees said they think US electricity demand will have peaked by 2030. Looking at the past decade, hooking up millions of vehicles to the grid may offer the best route ...

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• 1 September

  The earnings boom isn’t just about lower taxes

  

  In the first quarter of this year, after-tax US corporate profits as measured by the Bureau of Economic Analysis went up a lot (at an 8.2 percent annualised rate over the previous quarter), but pretax profits only went up a little (1.2 percent). That raised questions of whether all those great first-quarter earnings reports were mainly just the result of ...

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• 1 September

  The ECB should pick an Italian to supervise banks

  It seemed like good news for Europe when Sharon Donnery, deputy governor of the Irish central bank, made an application to be the top banking supervisor at the European Central Bank (ECB). She is widely regarded as extremely competent, has experience in important areas like nonperforming loans, and is a woman in an institution that badly needs women in leadership ...

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• 1 September

  By a 99.3 percent verdict, India’s cash ban was a farce

  

  In the chaotic final months of 2016, angry citizens were slamming the Reserve Bank of India by calling it the “Reverse Bank.” It’s taken Governor Urjit Patel, who had only recently stepped into the top job, almost two years to reassert his authority and reestablish the institution’s credibility with a couple of notable successes just this week. Ridicule flew thick ...

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• 1 September

  Aston Martin IPO looks like a case of a Ferrari envy

  

  Tech IPOs generate lots of excitement, but for sheer theater it helps to have something tangible — like a car. When Ferrari NV sold shares to the public in 2015, it parked half a dozen of its most recognisable vehicles outside the New York Stock Exchange. This seemed to do the trick. Before long, the company’s shares were valued as ...

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• 1 September

  Imagine a world where shareholders didn’t come first

  

  US Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed a bill — the Accountable Capitalism Act — that would require large companies to create corporate charters that take account of the interests of workers, customers and communities in addition to shareholders. To enforce this dictum, it would give each company’s employees the power to elect 40 percent of the corporate directors. Right now, ...

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August, 2018

• 29 August

  First UAE-made satellite to be launched on Oct 29

  DUBAI / WAM HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre and the General Supervisor of its projects and plans, said launch of KhalifaSat is an important step towards achieving UAE’s space strategy. Highlighting the efforts of the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre team, he said ...

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• 29 August

  OFID to provide $37.5mn funding for African nations

  VIENNA / WAM The Opec Fund for International Development (OFID) signed pu-blic sector loan agreements totalling $37.5 million with Gui- nea Bissau, Burundi and Uga-nda to support socio-economic development and living standards in the African continent. OFID’s $20 million loan to Burundi will help fund the ‘Rumonge-Nyanza Lac Road Rehabilitation Project’. Improvements to 52km stretch of road will promote development ...

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