June, 2018

• 25 June

  US plans new curbs on Chinese investment, citing security risk

  

  Bloomberg The Treasury Department is planning to heighten scrutiny of Chinese investments in sensitive US industries under an emergency law, putting Washington’s trade war with Beijing on a potentially irreversible course. Under the plan, the White House would use one of the most significant legal measures available to declare China’s investment in US companies involved in technologies such as new-energy ...

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• 25 June

  EU businesses cut UK ties over Brexit

  

  Bloomberg British businesses aren’t the only ones unhappy with the state of Brexit negotiations. Companies in the rest of the European Union aren’t thrilled either. Exactly two years after the referendum, nearly half of 800 executives surveyed across six EU countries by law firm Baker McKenzie said their businesses had reduced investment in the UK since the Brexit vote, according ...

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• 25 June

  Blackstone to raise $5bn for infrastructure fund

  

  Bloomberg Blackstone Group LP is nearing a first close of $5 billion for its inaugural infrastructure fund, according to people familiar with the matter. The fundraising, expected to be finalised this week, is slightly behind schedule but will mark the biggest initial close for a first-time fund across any alternative investment strategy after SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund and the ...

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• 25 June

  GE to sell power unit to Advent for $3bn

  Bloomberg General Electric Co. is nearing the sale of its factory power-generation unit to Advent International for at least $3 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. The private equity firm apparently triumphed over a competing bid from Cummins Inc. and a transaction may be announced, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter who weren’t identified. The assets include ...

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• 25 June

  Trump’s metal import tariffs yielded more than $775mn

  

  Bloomberg The Trump administration has collected more than $775 million so far from its metal import tariffs, as lawmakers from both parties blasted the duties and said the process for requests by companies for exclusions must improve. The tariffs President Donald Trump imposed in March have generated $582 million from steel imports and $195 million from aluminum as of last ...

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• 25 June

  Trump is hurling a wrecking ball towards trans-Atlantic ties

  

  A bright banner at NATO’s lavish new headquarters here proclaims the core conviction of the trans-Atlantic alliance: “We are together. We are strong.” But the words seem a bit hollow these days, as President Trump escalates his attacks on America’s traditional European partners. Trump’s “America First” policies have shaken many of the nations that looked to Washington as their ally ...

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• 25 June

  Corbyn’s terrible economic idea

  

  The UK Labour Party’s plan to set the Bank of England a productivity target must rank among the worst ideas ever conceived for a central bank. It runs against pretty much everything economists believe should be the role of a monetary authority. And it would amount to an outright admission of defeat by elected politicians, whose task it is to ...

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• 25 June

  ECB bond change pulls the rug from long end

  

  It certainly appears dovish that the European Central Bank (ECB) expects to reinvest even more of its maturing holdings next year, as Bloomberg News reported. It’s even more so if, as President Mario Draghi has suggested, officials relax the rules on how much time they can take to make reinvestments — more flexibility here gives them room to smooth ructions ...

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• 25 June

  Greece’s deal leaves too much to chance

  The government must be ecstatic, and the prime minister’s tailor even happier. Greece has secured a much more generous than expected deal that should allow it to put its bailout behind it and let Alexis Tsipras put on the tie he promised to forgo until the country’s debt woes were over. But there remains one sticking point: whether the country ...

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• 25 June

  Business should brace for the worst kind of Brexit

  

  When European Union (EU) heads meet at the end of this month, they are likely to issue a warning to bureaucracies and firms to step up preparations for a no-deal Brexit, also known as a ‘hard’ or ‘cliff-edge’ Brexit, because that’s where things appear to be heading in the talks between the EU and the UK. At this point, it’s ...

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