July, 2018

• 11 July

  ‘US shouldn’t use spurious security claim for tariffs’

  

  Bloomberg The US should build a global alliance to tackle China on unfair trading practices instead of using spurious national security claims to impose tariffs that also hurt allies, said former US Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew. Lew said that the US is in danger of abandoning the global economic order it helped to build. He also said the US ...

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• 11 July

  Escalating trade tensions turning into mood killer for investors in euro area

  

  Bloomberg Investors’ confidence in the euro area and Germany took another knock as the escalation of trade tensions between the US and many of the world’s major economies cast a cloud over improving data. The ZEW Center for European Economic Research said its measure of investor expectations for Germany fell to minus 24.7 in July from minus 16.1 in June, ...

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• 11 July

  Facebook faces £500,000 fine from UK watchdog

  

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc. could be fined a symbolic 500,000 pounds ($664,000) by the UK’s privacy regulator after the social network giant failed to prevent key user data falling into the hands of a political consultancy that helped get President Donald Trump elected. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office is threatening the company with the maximum penalty allowed, it said when issuing ...

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• 11 July

  Uber loses human resources head

  

  Bloomberg Uber Technologies Inc.’s head of human resources has resigned, becoming the latest high-profile executive to depart a ride-hailing giant only just emerging from a year of internal upheaval. Liane Hornsey’s exit came after an anonymous employee, emailing Uber’s whistle-blower account and Chief Legal Officer Tony West, threatened to go public with grievances if the company didn’t take action. The ...

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• 11 July

  Microsoft debuts Surface Go tablet

  Bloomberg Microsoft Corp. is going for the low-end of the personal computing market with a smaller, cheaper Surface Go tablet that takes on Apple Inc.’s cheapest iPads. The Surface Go has a 10-inch screen, about the same size as the entry-level iPad. At $399, the device is $400 cheaper than the current Surface Pro tablet, but has slower Intel Corp. ...

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• 11 July

  Chinese tariffs on energy trade would signal shift

  

  In placing retaliatory tariffs on certain goods and products, America’s trade partners have signalled how well they understand American politics. By targeting products from areas supportive of President Donald Trump, they clearly hope to generate pressure to lift US tariffs or even create broader political problems for the president. But China is sending much more interesting — and complex — ...

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• 11 July

  Think of Amazon as a value stock

  

  By conventional measures of stock prices, Amazon.com Inc looks very expensive. It’s actually surprisingly cheap. Twenty-one years after it went public, a share of Amazon stock costs 70 times more than the company’s estimated per-share future earnings. That means investors are willing to pay much more for each dollar of Amazon’s earnings than for shares of Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Alphabet ...

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• 11 July

  The corporate bonds are getting junkier

  Much has been made of the degradation of the $7.5 trillion US corporate debt market. High yield offers too little, well, yield. And “high grade” now requires air quotes to account for the growing dominance of bonds rated BBB, which is the lowest rung on the investment-grade ladder before dropping into “junk” status. And then there’s the massive market for ...

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• 11 July

  Europe should give May’s soft-Brexit plan a chance

  Britain’s endless self-inflicted turmoil over Brexit has taken a fresh turn, with Prime Minister Theresa May’s new plan for a post-Brexit trade agreement and the resignations of key ministers from her government. She’s accused of betraying those who voted for Brexit, and her leadership might soon be challenged. The prospect of a maximally disruptive “hard Brexit” draws ever closer. Yet ...

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• 11 July

  Oil and gas companies will lead energy revolution

  

  When it comes to climate change, I have always been a believer: not in hand-wringing debate, not in unrealistic solutions like the elimination of hydrocarbons, but in the power of action. In 1997, as chief executive of BP, I was the first leader of a major oil company to acknowledge that climate change was a problem, and that the industry ...

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