July, 2018

• 29 July

  Latin America looks past US on trade

  

  A beleaguered Argentina had hosted the G-20 finance ministers to work out the agenda for their leaders’ December conclave in Buenos Aires. While officially focussed on infrastructure and the future of work, these more technical discussions were overshadowed by US tariff threats and President Donald Trump’s belligerence towards allies and the World Trade Organization. The US attack on the global ...

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• 29 July

  Exxon is lucky big oil had a week to forget

  It hasn’t been Big Oil’s finest week. Exxon Mobil Corp does things bigger than most, and that also applies to missing expectations, it seems. It reported earnings and cash flow per share in the latest quarter that were both short of consensus forecasts by more than 20 percent. Production of oil and gas, especially the latter, fell heavily. As a ...

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• 29 July

  Twitter needs to accept a scaled-back reality

  The hyped Twitter “recovery” has derailed. The company’s second-quarter financial report showed that the number of people using Twitter has stagnated and will decline, although the company said that’s at least in part because of intentional decisions to clean up its cesspool. Revenue growth, particularly in Twitter Inc’s vital US advertising market, is tepid for what was billed as a ...

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• 29 July

  Inflation is coming thanks to Trump’s trade tariffs

  

  Did the global economy dodge an economic bullet? The US and the European Union agreed to step back from the brink of imposing mutually punishing tariffs. The agreement — if there really is one — contemplates a future agreement to resolve trade differences. Like Brexit, this is an unformed plan to somehow resolve thorny differences at an undetermined date in ...

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• 29 July

  Beijing towers over China’s next $9bn IPO

  

  China Tower Corp’s Hong Kong IPO looks like a pretty straightforward affair. The business is about as vanilla as it gets: The company builds and runs towers on which telecom operators hang their transmission equipment. It collects rent in return. No need to wrestle with GMV, MAU or ARPU. There’s a reason why fund managers and index compilers treat global ...

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• 29 July

  2014 had great GDP quarter, too. It did not last

  

  The recent strong second-quarter gross domestic product report brings up the question of whether it can be sustained in a way it wasn’t the last time GDP growth was this robust four years ago. The economy in 2014 had some things going for it that the current economy lacks — a federal funds rate firmly anchored at zero and an ...

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• 29 July

  RBI all set to raise interest rates to stem capital flows

  

  Bloomberg India’s central bank is on course to raise interest rates for a second consecutive policy meeting as it takes more decisive steps to rein in inflation and stem capital outflows. With inflation running well above the central bank’s medium-term target of 4 percent — and the outlook set to worsen as oil prices stay elevated and the currency slides ...

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• 29 July

  JPMorgan sees ‘massive amounts’ of cash feeding M&A in Nordic region

  

  Bloomberg There’s a lot of cash swishing about in the Nordic region and that leaves plenty of potential for more mergers and acquisitions, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. “There’s massive amounts of dry powder both on the corporate side, where cash balances are very good, and on the private equity side, where we see a lot of activity,” said ...

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• 29 July

  Santander sees rising loan growth

  

  Bloomberg Banco Santander is riding Spain’s economic recovery and rising demand for loans, helping offset emerging market currency volatility and the UK slowdown. Net income of 1.7 billion euros ($2 billion) beat analyst’s estimates in the second quarter, with earnings up in Brazil even after the real tumbled. In Spain clients took advantage of the economic upswing to take on ...

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• 29 July

  PBOC’s new move to boost loan growth

  Bloomberg Some Chinese banks have received notice from regulators that a specific capital requirement will be eased in order to support lending, as the authorities try to mitigate increasing risks to the economy from the trade war. The People’s Bank of China told some institutions on Wednesday that the so-called “structural parameter” in the Macro-Prudential Assessment of their balance sheets ...

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