June, 2018

• 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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• 25 June

  Cash-rich Japan Inc. offers a haven from US zombies

  

  There are few places for investors to hide when a global trade war is about to erupt and the US Treasury yield curve threatens to invert. Japan may be one. The nation’s stock market has been relatively calm this year, with the Topix index down less than 2 percent in dollar terms. This is noteworthy considering a third of revenue ...

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• 25 June

  Shale’s suffering indigestion, not a heart attack

  

  The Permian basin is the center of shale’s world, whether it fascinates investors or, as today, repels them. The recent selloff has obscured that. The Permian’s denizens are currently victims of their own success. Production of oil and gas has outrun the pipeline capacity to get it all to market, leading to steep discounts being taken on some of it. ...

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