April, 2018

• 22 April

  Qualcomm needs to come up with a better plan B

  Qualcomm Inc. needs to start working on a plan B more exciting than share buybacks. China’s Ministry of Commerce is pushing back on Qualcomm’s proposed $45 billion-plus purchase of NXP Semiconductors NV, forcing the chipmaker to refile its request for approval. The deal process is now in its 18th month; put a different way, the NXP takeover was announced before ...

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• 22 April

  US earns more in China than trade numbers reveal

  American companies are doing much more in China than the US trade deficit suggests. It’s their greatest weakness. The deficit, the difference between what the US imports from China and what it exports there, widened to $375 billion last year. It sounds like a lot. President Donald Trump and others take it as evidence that the relationship between the world’s ...

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• 22 April

  Billionaire Jeff Bezos and the warehouse workers

  

  We have just learned that the median salary of employees at Amazon.com Inc. is $28,446, excluding its chief executive officer and founder, Jeff Bezos. That pitiful number raises an intriguing question: Is Amazon a high-paying tech company or a low-wage retailer? “Both” is the obvious answer, but to this Amazon aficionado that answer is incomplete. The pay figure, which was ...

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• 22 April

  Why airlines need more women pilots at controls

  

  Tammie Jo Shults is commercial aviation’s latest hero. So why aren’t there more pilots like her? The Southwest Airlines Co. captain, praised for her cool handling of a depressurization and emergency landing in Philadelphia after the Boeing Co. 737’s engine blew apart mid-flight, is still an anomaly in the airline industry. While women make up roughly half of cabin crew, ...

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• 22 April

  Everyone talks about Apple’s changing business except Apple

  

  Apple Inc. is changing, and everyone knows it except Apple itself. Apple executives consistently fail to be straightforward about significant technology trends and how they affect the company. The biggest of the big trends: Growth in the smartphone market is gone, at least for now. The likeliest buyers now own at least one of the devices. Smartphone owners are holding ...

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• 22 April

  World’s central banks fret trade war more deflationary than inflationary

  

  Bloomberg Global central bankers sounded the alert that a trade war would leave them worrying more about the economic fallout than any boost tariffs would give to inflation. As President Donald Trump threatens to impose levies on imported steel and aluminum and duties on as much as $150 billion of Chinese goods, uncertainty over global commerce is casting a pall ...

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• 22 April

  Japan bank falls most since 1975 over faked documents report

  

  Bloomberg Suruga Bank Ltd., the worst-performing bank stock in Japan this year, tumbled the most since 1975 after the Asahi newspaper reported that it gave property investment loans based on faked applications. Real estate companies provided the regional bank with documentation for loan applications that had been falsified to make borrowers look more creditworthy than they were, the Asahi reported. ...

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• 22 April

  World Bank edges near $13bn capital boost

  

  Bloomberg The World Bank won support from its member countries for a $13 billion capital increase, with the US dropping its objection as the lender imposes measures that would potentially reduce loans to China. The boost will be accompanied by internal steps “including operational changes and effectiveness reforms, loan pricing measures, and other policy steps,” the World Bank said in ...

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• 22 April

  ‘New Zealand bank culture better than Australia’

  

  Bloomberg New Zealand’s banking sector doesn’t share the cultural problems that are coming to the surface at an inquiry into misconduct in Australia’s financial industry, Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr says. “The true problem and challenge going on in Australia is cultural,” Orr said in an interview on Television New Zealand’s Q+A. New Zealand bank culture “is infinitely better than ...

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• 22 April

  Wells Fargo’s big fine puts fresh focus on power of Trump tweets

  

  Bloomberg For years, Republican lawmakers and regulators have groused about big corporate fines, arguing that they mostly punish blameless shareholders, not the executives who are responsible for misconduct. Then President Donald Trump tweeted his ire about Wells Fargo & Co. and — at least in the case of the embattled bank — the GOP is singing a different tune. Watchdogs ...

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