July, 2018

• 23 July

  G-20 meet: Europe shows unity in confronting US trade policy

  

  Bloomberg Finance chiefs from the world’s leading economies met in Buenos Aires at the weekend as trade tensions threaten to undermine the fastest growth in seven years. Finance ministers and central bank chiefs met after US President Donald Trump accused Beijing and the European Union of gaming their currencies to boost exports. He also attacked the US Federal Reserve for ...

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• 23 July

  ‘Trade tensions threaten global economic growth’

  Bloomberg Trade tensions threaten global growth as the engines of leading economies fall out of sync, the world’s top finance chiefs warned. Global growth remains robust and many emerging-market countries are better prepared to face crises, but risks to the world economy have increased, finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 nations said in a statement published ...

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• 23 July

  France’s Atos to buy US IT giant Syntel in $3.4bn deal

  

  Bloomberg Atos SE agreed to buy Syntel Inc. for about $3.4 billion in a cash deal that would give the French computer-services company access to large US financial customers including American Express Co. and State Street Corp. Bezons, France-based Atos will pay $41 a share for the US information technology firm, the companies said in a joint statement. The per-share ...

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• 23 July

  UK seeks electric vehicle charging fund manager

  Bloomberg The UK Treasury began its search for a manager to oversee a new 400 million-pound ($526 million) fund that will encourage drivers to switch to electric vehicles (EV) by building charging infrastructure. The Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund manager will be tasked with raising 200 million pounds from the private sector to match the same amount of money set aside ...

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• 23 July

  Tesla asks suppliers for refunds to help profit

  

  Bloomberg Tesla Inc. asked some suppliers to return a portion of its payments to them in an attempt by the electric-car maker to turn a profit, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a memo sent to a supplier last week. The company, whose eroding cash position has alarmed investors, requested a “meaningful” amount of payments made since 2016 to be ...

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• 23 July

  US factories more competitive: Goldman

  

  Bloomberg American manufacturers remain competitive and lower goods exports aren’t solely to blame for a widening US trade deficit and fewer manufacturing jobs, according to analysis by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. It sees three key factors explaining the burgeoning trade gap and fall in production jobs: Unit labor costs in manufacturing have grown slowly, reflecting a surge in productivity growth ...

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• 23 July

  Trump’s tax reform hasn’t done anything for workers

  

  A few months ago, I cautioned that Americans should be patient before deciding what effect President Donald Trump’s tax cuts have had on the economy. It takes a while for companies to make investment decisions, more time for those decisions to be implemented and even more time for the resulting changes in labor demand to bid up workers’ wages. It ...

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• 23 July

  What Fed will signal at meeting next week

  

  The Federal Reserve is highly unlikely to raise rates at its policy meeting next week. The view that the event will be a snoozer, with little potential to move markets significantly, is reinforced in two ways: The semi-annual report to Congress on monetary policy by Chair Jerome Powell last week that involved comprehensive written submissions and hours of Q&A; and ...

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• 23 July

  Singapore hack a speed bump for $9trn industry

  As far as cyberhacks go, those in health care are particularly irksome. The notion that some stranger, a malicious one at that, has accessed our medical data gets under most people’s skin. Even beyond financial and employment data, there’s nothing more personal than our history of diseases, diagnoses and medicines, including possibly psychological or even terminal conditions. News at the ...

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• 23 July

  In fining Google, Europe gets almost everything wrong

  In a long-awaited decision, the European Commission fined Alphabet Inc’s Google a record 4.3 billion euros ($5 billion) for unfair business practices. The commission won some praise for standing up to big tech. But theatrics aside, this decision is misguided, harmful to consumers, and almost entirely beside the point. Start with the alleged offenses. Google licenses its Android software to ...

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