June, 2018

• 4 June

  Old-fashioned concept is Japan’s secret weapon

  Like ‘gemutlich’ (a German adjective describing fireside coziness), the Japanese word ‘omotenashi’ is hard to define but easy to picture. It’s a cashier greeting you nicely rather than chatting with colleagues and tossing your purchase across the counter — an all-encompassing focus on service and caring professionalism. Long hailed as the epitome of Japanese quality, the concept is for the ...

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• 4 June

  Soros is hyping existential threat to European Union

  

  Any instance of political turmoil in one of Europe’s bigger economics triggers predictions of the imminent collapse of the European Union or the euro area. The latest prophet of doom is George Soros, who recently proclaimed that “everything that could go wrong has gone wrong” for Europe. But at such moments, I’m with James Gorman, Morgan Stanley’s chief executive officer, ...

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• 4 June

  All roads, whether electric or even oil, lead to China

  

  A decade ago, knowing where the oil market was going meant knowing China. Today, the same can be said for electric vehicles — which means it still applies to oil, too. That’s a big takeaway from the latest edition of Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s annual Electric Vehicle Outlook. China isn’t the whole ballgame, but its role in determining the feasibility ...

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• 4 June

  Uber’s ghost in self-driving machine exposed

  

  What is an autonomous car — and more to the point, has Uber Technologies Inc. been operating them at all? From its public statements, you’d certainly think that its vehicles can more or less drive themselves, with humans required only as a safety back-up while the system is in trial mode. The preliminary report released by the US National Transportation ...

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• 4 June

  Stocks rise on growth outlook; Treasuries steady, dollar drops

  

  Bloomberg US and European stocks advanced on Monday, tracking peers in Asia as optimism over the world’s largest economy helped investors put protectionist fears to one side. Treasuries were steady, the dollar fell, and the pound and euro rose. The Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq Composite Indexes opened higher after Microsoft Corp. agreed to buy coding site GitHub for ...

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• 4 June

  $210 billion of Indian bad debt lures funds seeking returns

  

  Bloomberg India’s two-year-old bankruptcy law, which gives creditors more power to restructure troubled companies, is luring more and more offshore investors from as far as Canada to buy the nation’s bad debt. Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, a Canadian pension fund manager, has made $600 million available to Edelweiss Group for investment in local distressed assets, according to ...

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• 4 June

  China banks’ waning demand hints at more bond defaults

  

  Bloomberg China’s banks, scrambling to adjust to the government’s deleveraging campaign, are likely to add to pressures on the corporate bond market as they shed more of their massive note holdings and de-risk their balance sheets. Further payment problems are likely in a market that has already seen at least 14 corporate bond defaults this year, according to Logan Wright, ...

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• 4 June

  UniCredit considering merger with SocGen

  Bloomberg Italian bank UniCredit SpA is considering a merger with France’s Societe Generale SA, a move that would combine two of Europe’s largest financial institutions, the Financial Times reported. UniCredit Chief Executive Officer Jean Pierre Mustier, who is French and once worked for SocGen, has been developing the idea for several months, the FT said, citing people close to the ...

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• 4 June

  Commonwealth Bank of Australia to pay record fine to settle laundering suit

  

  Bloomberg Commonwealth Bank of Australia has agreed to pay the biggest civil penalty in Australian corporate history, after admitting to more than 53,000 money-laundering law breaches that allowed drug syndicates to funnel millions of dollars offshore. The nation’s largest lender will pay A$700 million ($530 million) to bring to an end the 10-month saga, which led to the departure of ...

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• 4 June

  Banks beat India’s RBI in raising borrowing costs

  

  Bloomberg Indian lenders are raising interest rates even before any central bank action as the strongest loan demand in four years amid weak deposit growth pressures funding costs. State Bank of India, ICICI Bank Ltd. and Punjab National Bank are among the nation’s biggest banks that increased their benchmark lending rates last week. The Reserve Bank of India, on the ...

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