May, 2018

• 19 May

  Hedge funds are the good guys in Carillion debacle

  

  A plague on all their houses (plus their second homes, and buy-to-let properties)! A report by UK lawmakers on the causes of Carillion Plc’s collapse finds fault with almost everyone involved in Britain’s system of corporate governance. Management, non-executive directors, auditors, advisers and regulators are subjected to varying degrees of opprobrium. The report’s key recommendation – that the government should ...

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• 19 May

  Japan dead last in startups needs Masa the super angel

  

  If Masayoshi Son is to set up another $100 billion Vision Fund, he should use it to tackle Japan’s low birth rate. Not of humans – though it would be great if he could solve that problem. It’s the nation’s position dead last in global entrepreneurship that would be a better cause than pouring money into multibillion-dollar firms. With a ...

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• 19 May

  Aluminum’s green cloak is masking a black heart

  

  Aluminum likes to cherish its image as the green metal. Endlessly recyclable and – in North America and Europe at least – largely manufactured using renewable hydroelectric power rather than the dirty coal used to produce steel and cement, its reputation is so solid that Apple Inc., Alcoa Corp. and Rio Tinto Group are aiming to make it even greener. ...

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• 19 May

  Wearable tech to drive Asia growth

  

  Bloomberg The technology boom powering Asia’s economies is about to get a reboot. Explosive growth in new-era gadgets such as wearable devices and internet-linked home appliances is tipped to offset cooling sales of smartphones, which has already dinged Asia’s tech manufacturers. “Where demand may be softening in some areas it will be strengthening in others,” Koshy Mathai, a senior official ...

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• 19 May

  China’s iQiyi website explores social video

  

  Bloomberg China’s biggest Netflix-like streaming site finally has a plan to get into the rapidly expanding arena of social and user-generated short-form videos. But iQiyi Inc. reckons it’ll take as long as three years to get there. The Baidu Inc. spinoff had long recognised the potential but chosen to focus on its core business out of necessity, iQiyi Chief Executive ...

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• 19 May

  Japanese AI startup aims to teach factory robots to think

  

  Bloomberg Japan’s Preferred Networks Inc. has only one publicly available product, a whimsical application that uses artificial intelligence to automate the coloring of manga cartoons. Yet the four-year-old firm has become Japan’s most valuable startup, with a venture capital funding that priced it at more than $2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. Toyota Motor Corp., its biggest ...

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• 19 May

  BMW bets on self-driving iNext halo in luxury sales race

  

  Bloomberg BMW AG offered another glimpse of its futuristic self-driving iNext car as the German manufacturer seeks to gain momentum in the race to overtake rival Mercedes-Benz in luxury car sales. The company, showing the iNext in a copper-colored version for the first time in 2016, will offer a more concrete concept of the vehicle this year, Chief Executive Officer ...

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• 19 May

  SoftBank-backed firm’s game released to public

  Bloomberg The first video-game built using technology developed by Improbable Worlds Ltd., the virtual reality startup backed by SoftBank Group Corp., has been released by British developer Bossa Studios. Worlds Adrift uses Improbable’s SpatialOS software, which lets programmers create realistic simulations of massive scale and complexity and run across a cloud-computing network. Softbank acquired a non-controlling stake in London-based Improbable ...

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• 19 May

  Emerging markets under pressure to hike rates

  

  Bloomberg Emerging-market central banks are going on the defensive. A surging dollar and the highest 10-year US Treasury yields since 2011 are fuelling bets that policy makers in key developing nations from India to Mexico will raise interest rates faster than economists previously anticipated. The turnaround is led by concern that a failure to tighten monetary policy risks the possibility ...

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• 19 May

  BOE seen raising rates at least once this year

  

  Bloomberg Slower-than-expected UK growth this year won’t stop the Bank of England from at least one interest-rate increase, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists. Output will stutter to 1.4 percent from 1.8 percent in 2017, the median forecast showed, slightly lower than the 1.5 percent previously forecast. Nearly 60 percent of economists see a hike at the August meeting. ...

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