May, 2018

• 7 May

  In trade spat, China has a decided advantage

  Inconsequential tariffs don’t cause trade wars; the US bankrupting China’s technology companies just might. Trade rhetoric between the countries will likely escalate, but the potential bankruptcy of ZTE Corp. after the US banned exports to the company last month could turn out to be the shot that triggers the war. China would likely respond with a strong reprisal against US ...

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• 7 May

  Own an android phone? You might not get that loan

  

  I have great respect for Apple, but I refuse to buy its $1,000 phones. Instead, I use a $250 Android device with a long battery life. In the emerging big data-based economy, however, that could cost me in ways I can’t even predict. A recent paper by Tobias Berg of the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany and ...

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• 7 May

  HSBC’s hungry lions need fresh prey

  

  Stephen and Stitt — the iconic HSBC Holdings Plc lions — are crouching and ready to pounce. Adjusted profit from Asian operations jumped 8.5 percent from a year earlier to $4.76 billion in the first-quarter results showed last week. That’s even as ho-hum performance everywhere else dragged down return on equity to an annualized rate of 7.5 percent, a drop ...

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• 7 May

  Climate change turns coastal property into a junk bond

  

  A friend of mine who is a bit of a climate-change skeptic once challenged me with this question: If climate change is such a pressing danger, why haven’t coastal real estate prices crashed? It’s a fair question. If financial markets are even close to efficient, and if everyone knows climate change is about to flood the coasts, then it stands ...

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• 7 May

  Goldman’s $1 billion bankers are benchmark in Asia’s wealth race

  

  Bloomberg For years, Asia’s biggest private banks have been on a hiring spree to keep pace with the ranks of newly minted millionaires. Now, they’re squeezing more out of their bankers. Relationship managers who cater to wealthy clients in the region are running larger pools of money, with average assets run by each surging to an all-time high of $341 ...

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• 7 May

  Smart money selling emerging markets assets, says JPMorgan

  

  Bloomberg Stocks down for a third successive week, bond yields at their highest since 2016 and a currency market replete with bears. Such have been the declines in emerging markets that the more sanguine commentators have begun saying the selloff has run its course and it may even be time to buy the dip. But JPMorgan Chase & Co. says ...

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• 7 May

  Bonds rise as Indian central bank announces $1.5bn debt purchase

  

  Bloomberg Sovereign bonds in India rallied after the central bank said it will purchase debt to meet the cash needs of the banking system. The Reserve Bank of India said it would buy 100 billion rupees ($1.5 billion) of securities with maturities ranging from 2020 to 2033 maturities on May 17. The purchases comes after the shortest bond on sale ...

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• 7 May

  ECB warns on trade tensions as ‘economy’ falters

  

  Bloomberg The European Central Bank warned that a rise in trade protectionism would undermine the global economy, and said the US would be among the worst-affected. The cautionary comments coincide with data showing factory orders in Germany unexpectedly slid for a third month in March, another sign of the weakness that’s dogged the euro-area economy since the start of the ...

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• 7 May

  OCBC drops on concern profit growth relied on loan provisions

  Bloomberg Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp (OCBC) shares fell the most in a month after the Singaporean bank posted first-quarter profit growth that relied largely on a drop in loan provisions as lending margins stagnated. Southeast Asia’s second-largest bank slid as much as 3.2 percent in Singapore on Monday morning after Chief Executive Officer Samuel Tsien signaled that last quarter’s decline in ...

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• 7 May

  China set to give global finance sector the chance of a lifetime

  

  Bloomberg China’s $42 trillion financial sector is set to open up to the world like never before. To deliver on longstanding pledges and help stave off the threat of tariffs from US President Donald Trump, Chinese officials have set a June 30 deadline to ease ownership and business restrictions for banks, securities firms, asset managers and life insurers. Securities firms ...

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