June, 2018

• 23 June

  GE’s Dow eviction is a form of intervention

  

  John Flannery has one less reason to keep General Electric Co. together. The 126-year-old company and last original member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average was dropped from the index last week and will be replaced with drugstore chain Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. GE’s place on the benchmark index had been an open question for some time now as a ...

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• 23 June

  The Fed needs to pass its own stress test

  The largest US banks have just cleared the first hurdle of this year’s Federal Reserve stress tests, demonstrating that they have enough loss-absorbing capital to survive a hypothetical crisis. Now, investors are waiting to hear how much of that capital the banks will be allowed to pay out in the form of dividends and stock buybacks. They should be careful ...

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• 23 June

  Plenty of people want to fight Trump’s trade war

  

  US President Donald Trump rode to power declaring that China had twisted the world trading system out of shape — and plenty of people around the world murmured in agreement, if very quietly. The first shots in Trump’s trade war, however, have been indiscriminate. His steel and aluminium tariffs are the equivalent of firing into a curious crowd of onlookers. ...

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• 23 June

  Dislike! Sustainable fund says dump FB

  

  No responsible investor should own Facebook Inc. shares, according to the head of sustainable investing at the biggest bank in the Nordic region. That’s an unjustifiable overreaction. Sasja Beslik, who runs Nordea Bank AB’s sustainable finance unit, made the call to divest this week after Cambridge Analytica used data from as many as 87 million users of the social network ...

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• 23 June

  Brexit politics stymies UK healthcare debate

  

  UK Prime Minister Theresa May recently announced that the country’s crisis-ridden National Health Service (NHS) will receive an additional 20 billion pounds at today’s exchange rate by 2023. In normal times, that sort of decision might have followed a public discussion of how much the nation should spend on health care and where the money should come from. But this ...

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• 23 June

  When will Apple unveil its wireless charger …

  

  Bloomberg When Apple Inc. introduced AirPods earbuds in 2016, chief designer Jony Ive hailed the beginning of a new “wireless future”. The company’s devices would connect and charge without fiddly white cords and unsightly plugs and sockets. The next step was wireless charging for the iPhone, the ability to drop Apple’s flagship product on a charging mat and juice it ...

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• 23 June

  Audi, Hyundai to join forces to push fuel-cell technology

  

  Bloomberg Tesla Inc.’s CEO Elon Musk has called it “ mind-bogglingly stupid” and carmakers have gravitated away from it in recent years. Yet fuel-cell technology — the science behind hydrogen cars that emit only water vapour — is getting fresh impetus. Hyundai Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG’s Audi unit plan to team up on vehicle development and share patent licenses ...

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• 23 June

  Porsche buys stake in Croatia’s Rimac for battery-powered cars

  

  Bloomberg Porsche bought a 10 percent stake in Rimac Automobili, a Croatian maker of electric supercars and components, as the German sports car brand looks to accelerate its shift into battery-powered vehicles. “Rimac has impressively demonstrated its credentials in the field of electromobility,” Lutz Meschke, finance chief for the unit of Volkswagen AG, said in a statement. “We feel that ...

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• 23 June

  Robots missing from largest part of Japan’s economy

  

  Bloomberg Japan is famous as a land of robots, but most of those machines haven’t made their way off of factory floors. That presents an opportunity in a country with a serious labour shortage and a relatively unproductive services sector. Automation is seen as a key to better productivity and higher wages, which would in turn support consumption and help ...

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• 23 June

  Ford emerges with less fussy tech features

  Bloomberg After struggling for years to address complaints with its audio and connectivity systems, Ford Motor Co. achieved its highest-ever ranking this year in a closely watched annual study of new-car quality. Ford’s namesake brand ranked fifth in J.D. Power’s Initial Quality Study, which measures problems per 100 vehicles in first 90 days of ownership. Ford was one of the ...

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