July, 2018

• 7 July

  Pompeo departs North Korea without any breakthroughs

  

  Bloomberg US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left Pyongyang without immediately announcing any breakthroughs in efforts to implement North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s agreement with President Donald Trump. Pompeo held two days of meetings with senior North Korean officials led by top Kim aide, Kim Yong Chol, on concerns ranging from the regime’s nuclear arsenal to US security guarantees. It ...

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• 7 July

  Pakistan ex-PM Sharif convicted on corruption charges

  

  Bloomberg Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will return to the country after he was convicted on charges of corruption in a judgment that will likely dent the former ruling party’s prospects ahead of national elections this month. An anti-corruption court handed down a 10-year jail sentence and an $10.6 million fine against Sharif, 68. His daughter Maryam and her ...

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• 7 July

  May leads UK to soft Brexit, telling cabinet to back her or go

  

  Bloomberg UK PM Theresa May imposed her vision of a soft Brexit on her divided Cabinet, pleasing business with a plan to keep close trade ties to the European Union and telling insolent ministers to get behind her or resign. Her plan, which would set up a free-trade area with the EU and mirror EU rules for goods and food, ...

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• 7 July

  US to delay reuniting immigrant kids, parents

  

  Bloomberg The US Justice Department told a federal judge that the government needs more time to “safely” reunite almost 3,000 kids with their parents. US District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego had ordered the US to return all children under age five to their parents by July 10 and all other minors by July 26. “The government does not ...

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• 7 July

  Manafort: Can’t prepare for trial because of jail

  

  Bloomberg Paul Manafort said he can’t be ready for a July 25 trial in Alexandria, Virginia, on bank fraud and tax charges because the judge in his separate money-laundering case in Washington put him in a jail two hours away from his lawyers’ offices. Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, asked the judge in Virginia to delay the trial ...

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• 7 July

  Mind China’s strong home front in car wars

  

  Donald Trump is trying to take on the single most globalised industry — and China. But the world’s largest car market won’t budge. Beijing reduced duties on autos on July 1, just before the imposition of US tariffs on $34 billion of Chinese goods. China’s carmakers, like its consumers, are the least vulnerable to exte- rnal forces compared with counterparts ...

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• 7 July

  Even Sony Pictures has its price

  

  A big Asian player has been left out of a flurry of media and entertainment mergers. Japan’s Sony Pictures, a key unit of the revitalised Sony Corp, is unlikely to be sold under Kenichiro Yoshida. But the new CEO will owe shareholders an explanation if dealmaking heats up. As Comcast Corp looks to beat Walt Disney Co’s $71.3 billion offer ...

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• 7 July

  Glencore is in the hole, but it keeps on digging

  

  Glencore Plc’s announcement of a $1 billion stock buyback was short on both wit and colour. So allow me to hazard a rough translation: “Don’t worry, we’re rich and our share price should be much higher.” Faced with the unwelcome attention of the US Department of Justice, most companies would be inclined to batten down the hatches. But, just a ...

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• 7 July

  Praxair’s $6bn gas assets hand Japan a solid win

  Japanese acquirers aren’t known for underpaying. So the country’s top industrial-gas producer looks to have lucked out in buying the European cast-offs of the $45 billion merger between Germany’s Linde AG and Praxair Inc of the US. Praxair agreed to sell assets valued at about 5 billion euros ($5.9 billion) to Taiyo Nippon Sanso Corp as part of efforts to ...

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• 7 July

  Tests are not the only stress on Wall Street

  

  Wall Street is booming. Mergers and acquisitions are happening at a record pace this year. Initial public offerings are making a comeback. Volatility — the lifeblood of any good trader — is creeping back into markets. New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in March that Wall Street’s average bonus jumped 17 percent in 2017 to $184,220, the highest since ...

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