August, 2018

• 11 August

  New York approves first US cap on Uber, app-based cab drivers

  

  Bloomberg New York’s city council dealt a political blow to Uber Technologies Inc. and other app-based car-for-hire companies by approving a one-year industry wide cap on new licenses and giving the city Taxi & Limousine Commission authority to set minimum pay standards for drivers. The passage of sweeping industry regulations signalled politicians’ changed attitudes towards the so-called gig economy and ...

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• 11 August

  A quantum computing startup tries to live up to the hype

  

  Bloomberg Few corners of the tech industry are as tantalising or complex as quantum computing. For years evangelists have promised machines capable of breaking the most impenetrable coded messages, unlocking the secret properties of the physical world and putting supercomputers to shame. But Rigetti Computing, one of the most prominent and well-funded startups in the field, would just like to ...

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• 11 August

  Oil supply fears have abated as production rises, says IEA

  

  Bloomberg Fears about global oil supplies have receded after producers pumped more, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which a month ago warned of a potential shortage. “Concerns about the stability of oil supply have cooled down somewhat, at least for now,” the agency, which advises most of the world’s major economies, said in a monthly report. “We have ...

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• 11 August

  Australia’s oldest LNG ‘allies’ vie in race for gas

  Bloomberg After partnering for nearly three decades at Australia’s oldest liquefied natural gas export plant, Woodside Petroleum Ltd. and Chevron Corp. are competing to shape the next phase of the country’s gas development. Both are vying to build a pipeline from hundreds of kilometers offshore that will allow them to develop their own fields, as well as let third parties ...

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• 11 August

  Thumbs up to Trump plan to limit China tech deals

  

  Suppose a Chinese electric carmaker wants to win market share by selling cars with the best cutting-edge battery technology. How does it get that technology? It can hire some engineers, build a lab and try to develop it inhouse. It can partner with a university research lab to create it. Or alternatively, it can buy an American company that already ...

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• 11 August

  Excavator stocks can’t climb out of hole

  

  Calling the turn in industrial cycles isn’t easy. It looks like investors in the beaten-down machinery sector have decided to stop trying. Wade past the impact of the trade war and its potential collateral damage, and conditions are looking up. US bellwether Caterpillar Inc sounded an optimistic note in results, as did its typically cautious Japanese industrial machinery peers, which ...

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• 11 August

  Hedge fund’s Italian raid leaves us in dark

  Ten years on from the financial crisis, bank balance sheets haven’t become any simpler to digest for the average investor. Finance firms are big and leveraged; regulations have just become new instruments of complexity. That might suggest a potential windfall for any brainy number-cruncher who’s bored enough to spend a year looking for inconsistencies in the industry’s accounts. London hedge ...

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• 11 August

  Tesla going private would destroy CDS investors

  Elon Musk fired a bazooka in his war against Tesla Inc.’s equity market short-sellers when he announced he’s considering taking the company private. His plan would also most likely wipe out investors who bet the money-losing automaker would eventually default on its bonds. The cost to insure against Tesla failing to make good on its debt fell to an all-time ...

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• 11 August

  BoJ is committed to low interest rates, for now

  

  Japan may be just posing as an outlier. Yes, the Bank of Japan renewed its commitment to ultra-low interest rates just as other developed economies were moving towards further rate increases and an end to stimulus. But beneath the headlines about the BOJ’s pledge to keep printing money for an “extended period,” Governor Haruhiko Kuroda and his colleagues left clues ...

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• 11 August

  Hong Kong’s IPO takeoff is running out of runway

  

  Brace, brace. Hong Kong’s IPO takeoff is going to come to a screeching halt. There’s a flood of deals still in the pipeline, it’s true, from food delivery giant Meituan Dianping to biotech unicorn Innovent Biologics Inc. But investor fatigue is setting in, with many of the hot sales that helped to reignite the market in the past year trading ...

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