September, 2018

• 5 September

  China is outgrowing ‘factory of the world’ tag

  President Donald Trump talked tough against Mexico, and then essentially agreed to renew the existing trade deal and called that a victory. If only the China spat could end the same way. It won’t. That’s because the gulf between Beijing and Washington is not just caused by recent rhetoric and tariffs. It also goes beyond national security concerns. The inevitable ...

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• 5 September

  Imagine if shareholders didn’t come first at all

  

  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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• 5 September

  New Delhi shoots wrong general in lost war on cash

  

  When there’s no trick left to defend a spectacularly failed experiment, blame Raghuram Rajan. If India’s top policy think tank is to be believed, the reason economic growth faltered last year, reaching 5.6% in the June quarter after 7.6% nine months earlier, had nothing to do with the November 2016 ban on 86% of the country’s cash. The decline had ...

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• 5 September

  Meituan’s IPO could leave investors hungry

  

  Meituan Dianping wants to be everything to everyone: It even describes its mission as “helping people eat better, live better” in its preliminary IPO prospectus. With these broad ambitions, the Chinese food-delivery giant is sounding out investors for a valuation of $45 billion to $55 billion. Its plans to raise up to $4.5 billion in a Hong Kong IPO would ...

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• 5 September

  Record earnings at Canadian banks no match for US tax cuts

  

  Bloomberg Canadian banks are scoring back-to-back record earnings, beating big US lenders on profitability, productivity and dividend yields. They still can’t outperform US banks on the stock market. Toronto-Dominion Bank, Royal Bank of Canada and the nation’s other six large lenders collectively boosted profit 10 percent to a record $8.9 billion in the fiscal third quarter. Still, that’s no match ...

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• 5 September

  Rupee woes to deepen as India braces for external headwinds

  

  Bloomberg India’s rupee owes its tag of Asia’s worst-performing currency this year to the selloff sweeping emerging markets. There’s more pain in store from beyond its borders. While foreign currency debt has zoomed, various external vulnerability indicators paint a rather mixed picture, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s annual report. Indeed, data due as early as next week will ...

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• 5 September

  Carney’s future at BOE gets lawmakers’ mixed reactions

  Bloomberg The prospect of Bank of England (BOE) governor Mark Carney extending his term of office garnered mixed reactions from UK lawmakers. Carney told Parliament that he would be open to lengthening his tenure for a second time to help the UK’s transition out of the EU. The Financial Times reported later that he will stay until 2020 in a ...

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• 5 September

  Westpac admits lending breaches, settles for $25 million penalty

  

  Bloomberg Westpac Banking Corp. agreed to pay a A$35 million ($25 million) civil penalty after admitting it breached responsible-lending laws by failing to properly assess whether some customers could afford to repay their mortgages. In a settlement ahead of court, the regulator said in a statement that Westpac’s automated loan approval system had failed to use customers’ actual living expenses ...

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• 5 September

  Russia set for rate hike as ruble revs up inflation

  

  Bloomberg Russia’s central bank is setting the stage for an increase in interest rates as a weakening ruble fans inflation. Just five months after it stopped easing monetary policy, the Bank of Russia raised the prospect of its first hike in borrowing costs since 2014. The country’s latest bout of currency weakness is combining with a worsening outlook for inflation ...

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• 5 September

  Germany dismisses UK demands on banks’ post-Brexit access

  

  Bloomberg The European Union won’t rush to enhance market access for financial firms outside the bloc, a senior German official said, pushing back against key UK government demands in the Brexit negotiations. Expanding EU “equivalence” rules, which can open the single market to non-EU firms, to new areas such as banking is unlikely anytime soon, said Levin Holle, director general ...

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