July, 2018

• 7 July

  Is KKR building what phone giants couldn’t?

  

  As our appetite for data booms, private equity firms are betting on the cell towers and cable infrastructure to support it. The prize looks to be in creating the pan-European giant that has so far eluded the region’s telecoms industry. For years, Europe’s carriers have struggled to consolidate across the continent in the same way as their US counterparts. But ...

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• 7 July

  Robots will make life grim for the working class

  

  Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist and one of the pioneers of the world wide web, once declared: The spread of computers and the internet will put jobs in two categories. People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do. Andreessen has since repudiated this declaration, and taken a more optimistic stance. But economists, ...

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• 7 July

  Drone deliveries become reality in China

  

  Bloomberg The day after Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com Inc.’s mid-year sale, a company drone took off from a playground in the city of Xi’an to deliver one of the orders in a football-sized box to a village in the mountains to the south. The six-rotor craft is one of about 40 JD.com designed to cut delivery times for items such ...

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• 7 July

  Japan Display bets big on dashboard flash for drivers

  

  Bloomberg Fully digital screens are replacing speedometres and dials in vehicles, making industry leader Japan Display Inc. optimistic about boosting sales to global carmakers. While most new models usually have a centre information panel for maps, entertainment and other functions, manufacturers are also increasingly replacing the dashboard facing the driver with a flat screen. Look inside the latest BMW or ...

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• 7 July

  Baidu unveils AI chip for self-driving bus

  Bloomberg Baidu Inc. has unveiled an artificial intelligence(AI) chip to run intensive computing in everything from datacentres to autonomous driving, as the Chinese search giant prepares to launch its first self-driving vehicles in Japan. The AI chip, “Kunlun”, joins rival efforts from tech giants around the world, including local peers such as networking giant Huawei Technologies Co. search rankings. Baidu’s ...

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• 7 July

  Despite trade war, China EV-maker forges ahead with US push

  

  Bloomberg Byton, the Chinese electric-vehicle startup founded by former BMW AG executives, is forging ahead with plans to enter the US market even as the trade war casts a cloud of unpredictability for the push. The company plans to begin production of its $45,000 electric SUV in 2019 and still targets a US entry in 2020, CEO Carsten Breitfeld said. ...

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• 7 July

  BOE sees reversal of decade-long slump in Britain’s productivity

  

  Bloomberg Increasing investment by firms in technology means the UK’s abysmal productivity growth should soon start to recover, according to a Bank of England (BOE) staff blog. A shortage of skills and labour is acting as a catalyst for firms to introduce productivity-boosting technology such as automation, said Will Holman and Tim Pike, who work in the central bank’s division ...

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• 7 July

  RBI-favoured currency futures to prop up rupee from record low

  

  Bloomberg India’s central bank may increasingly be turning to the currency futures market to stem a slide that sent the rupee to a record low last month, according to analysts and traders. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI)  probably intervened to the tune of $2.5 billion in May — the highest for any month so far this year — and ...

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• 7 July

  JPMorgan not to buy stake in Deutsche Bank

  Bloomberg JPMorgan Chase & Co. denied a report in German magazine WirtschaftsWoche that it’s interested in acquiring a stake in Deutsche Bank AG, after the lender’s share price slumped. The New York-based bank and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. were named as being interested in an investment because Frankfurt will increase in importance after Brexit, the magazine said, ...

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• 7 July

  Credit Suisse agrees to pay $77mn to settle Princeling investigations

  

  Bloomberg Credit Suisse Group AG agreed to pay $77 million to settle US bribery probes claiming the lender’s Hong Kong unit attempted to win banking business by offering jobs to friends and family of Chinese officials. The bank over seven years tried to hire more than 100 employees at the request of government officials in the Asia-Pacific region, resulting in ...

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