July, 2018

• 28 July

  Shell starts buybacks even as profit misses expectations

  

  Bloomberg Royal Dutch Shell Plc finally gave investors the share buybacks they’ve been demanding, even as profit fell short of expectations despite resurgent crude prices. The Anglo-Dutch energy producer said that it is starting a $25 billion share-repurchase programme, initially buying up $2 billion of stock over three months. That should soothe investors who have grown increasingly anxious about when ...

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• 28 July

  On Brexit, what the EU says ten times is true

  

  When she started learning to play chess, my younger daughter was aghast that the pieces could’t always go where she wanted them to; she still ignores, for the most part, her opponent’s moves, figuring it’s enough for a victory to make good ones of her own. For two years, UK Prime Minister Theresa May has exhibited the same behavior. She ...

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• 28 July

  China isn’t using yuan to fight tariffs

  

  Since April, the yuan has fallen by almost 8 percent against the US dollar. This has led many analysts and politicians to speculate that China is intentionally trying to devalue its currency to offset the effect of President Donald Trump’s tariffs. It almost certainly isn’t. In theory, the price of the yuan is set by a basket of more than ...

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• 28 July

  GDP isn’t growing fast enough for markets

  President Donald Trump promised last week that the second-quarter gross domestic product number would be unthinkable. The number was, instead, what everyone expected, and that could pose a problem. The Commerce Department reported later that the second-quarter GDP rose an annualized 4.1 percent, just slightly less than forecasts for 4.2 percent. The biggest issue is that the number indicates that ...

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• 28 July

  Trump’s petty insult to former intel chiefs

  President Trump has threatened to take away the security clearances of former high-ranking intelligence officials who’ve criticized his policies. Intended as punishment for the likes of former FBI director James Comey, former director of national intelligence James Clapper and former CIA and NSA head Michael Hayden, the idea is petty even by this president’s standards. Fortunately, it’s also largely pointless. ...

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• 28 July

  Twitter and Facebook need a bigger cleanup

  

  The plunge of Facebook and Twitter shares in the last two days shows that both companies are hostages to investors’ unrealistic perceptions of how quickly they should grow even as they purge bots and trolls. Moving to eliminate all fake and malicious accounts, as well as making new ones very hard to register, would be scary given these inflated expectations. ...

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• 28 July

  Singapore worst data breach could damage nation’s banks health

  

  Singapore’s banks should watch the fallout from the island’s healthcare-data breach. This could get ugly for them. The National Electronic Health Record project is taking a pause after hackers stole data on 1.5 million patients including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who was “specifically and repeatedly” targeted. Immediate repercussions for banks have already become obvious, with the Monetary Authority of ...

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• 28 July

  BP tiptoes back into a Permian shale foothold

  

  BP Plc’s return to the Permian basin comes via a splashy $10.5 billion deal. But the oil major is trying its utmost not to make waves — and with good reason. BP is buying the Permian position, along with assets in the Eagle Ford and Haynesville basins, from BHP Billiton Ltd. BP left the Permian back in 2010 in the ...

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• 28 July

  Big tech throws money, talent at robots for the home

  

  Bloomberg Science fiction writers and technologists have been predicting the arrival of robot butlers for the better part of a century. So far domestic robots have been relatively pedestrian: robot dogs, vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers. Rosie of “The Jetsons” fame? Not so much. That may be about to change. Behind the scenes, big tech companies are funding secret projects to ...

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• 28 July

  Company that called demise of CD-ROMs moves away from LCDs

  

  Bloomberg Back in 2004, when selling CD-ROMs was still a lucrative business, BenQ Materials Corp. thought it was time to get out. In the years that followed, the technology became less mainstream, overtaken by everything from flash drives to online downloads. Now, the Taiwanese electronics parts maker is doing it again. This time, it’s cutting back on a different cash ...

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