June, 2018

• 5 June

  US farms can’t compete without foreign workers

  American farmers have been complaining of labor shortages for several years now. Given a multi-year decline in illegal immigration, and a similarly sustained pickup in the US job market, the complaints are unlikely to stop without an overhaul of immigration rules for farm workers. Efforts to create a more straightforward agricultural-workers visa that would enable foreign workers to stay longer ...

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• 5 June

  Italian populism may not bring economic doom

  

  The economic policy proposals of Italy’s populist coalition have spooked the markets, which have driven up government debt yields. And yet the two coalition partners, League and the Five Star Movement, may be on to something with a proposal for a two-tier flat tax. Today, Italy has five income tax brackets with rates ranging from 23 percent to 43 percent. ...

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• 5 June

  Anbang is taking a long, slow road to redemption

  

  Prepare for the great, but slow, unwinding of a Chinese leviathan. Anbang Insurance Group Co., the bailed-out owner of assets from New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel to Dutch insurer Vivat NV, is sending out mixed messages. The conglomerate hired bankers at UBS Group AG and China International Capital Corp. to advise on potential divestments, Bloomberg News reported; yet the government ...

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• 5 June

  Jaguar is being steered towards an Indian pothole

  

  Big trucks are all the rage in India, but Tata Motors Ltd.’s fortunes are still riding on a luxury marque that isn’t quite built for the subcontinent’s roads. Medium and heavy-duty commercial vehicles have been the fastest-growing segment of India’s rapidly expanding auto market, with sales up more than 60 percent in May from a year earlier as transport companies ...

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• 5 June

  Stocks struggle to maintain momentum; dollar climbs

  

  Bloomberg The global rally in risk assets that sent US stocks to a 12-week high sputtered on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 struggling to push higher. Treasuries rose while Italian bonds fell. Contracts for the S&P 500 had signalled the underlying gauge would extend gains following its highest finish since mid-March, but momentum faded as the open neared. After a ...

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• 5 June

  Oil slides as US asked OPEC for supply increase

  

  Bloomberg Crude declined after the US government was said to have asked Saudi Arabia and other OPEC producers to raise oil supply. The request for a 1 million-barrel-a-day increase follows Washington’s decision to re-impose sanctions on Iranian crude exports that had removed roughly the same amount from global markets when restrictions were previously in place earlier this decade. OPEC pumped ...

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• 5 June

  UK sells $3.3bn RBS stake after crisis-era bailout

  

  Bloomberg The British government sold a 2.5 billion pound ($3.3 billion) stake in Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, reducing its majority holding a decade after it bailed out the lender during the financial crisis. The state sold 7.7 percent in the lender at 271 pence per share to institutional investors, it said in a statement on Tuesday. Shares in ...

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• 5 June

  Wall Street leads chorus to get back into the emerging-market game

  

  Bloomberg This year won’t see a re-run of nightmare on EM street, according to a trio of top American banks, more than a few money managers and even a former central banker. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says fundamentals in emerging markets are mostly intact in the wake of the recent stress test from higher US interest rates, a rally in ...

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• 5 June

  Central bank covers GCB Bank of Ghana’s $461mn takeover liability

  

  Bloomberg GCB Bank of Ghana Ltd. said it received a 2.2 billion-cedi ($461 million) bond from the central bank for taking over the assets of two failed lenders in 2017. Ghana’s biggest lender by branch network acquired the liabilities and some assets of UT Bank Ltd. and Capital Bank Ltd. in August after the companies collapsed as they failed to ...

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• 5 June

  SocGen reaches agreements on benchmark, Libya probe

  Bloomberg Societe Generale SA agreed with US authorities to settle probes into interest-rate manipulation and the bribery of Libyan officials, drawing a line under two of the French bank’s biggest legal headaches. SocGen agreed to pay undisclosed penalties to resolve US investigations that it submitted misleading numbers for the London interbank offered rate and, in a separate case, bribed Libyans ...

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