April, 2018

• 14 April

  EU regulators tell financial firms to prepare for Brexit

  

  London / Reuters European Union regulators urged banks, investors and customers to take “timely action” to avoid disruption to cross-border derivatives and insurance contracts caused by Brexit. Britain leaves the EU in March 2019 and a “standstill” transition deal until the end of 2020 agreed last month won’t be formally ratified until October or later. “Contingency planning should consider timely ...

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• 14 April

  Springer Nature aims to raise $1.5bn in IPO

  FRANKFURT / Reuters Springer Nature, the publisher of science magazines Nature and Scientific American, is planning to raise 1.2 billion euros ($1.5 billion) by selling new shares in an initial public offering (IPO), also providing an oppo-rtunity for its private equity owner to cash in. While buyout group BC Partners will sell some of its shares in the listing, German ...

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• 14 April

  Canada export agency raises sales forecast on US growth

  

  Bloomberg Canada’s export financing agency is giving a vote of confidence to the nation’s economy even in the face of growing trade tensions, raising its projections for sales abroad in its semi-annual forecast report. Export Development Canada predicts the export of goods will grow 6 percent this year, up from a prediction of 4 percent growth six mon- ths ago, ...

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• 14 April

  Cyber security firm Avast plans watershed London tech listing

  

  London / Reuters Avast, the world’s largest consumer antivirus supplier by customers, said it will apply to list its shares on the London Stock Exchange in what could be a blockbuster float expected to value the company at around $4 billion. The listing, which is anticipated in early May, will see a free float of at least 25 percent of ...

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• 14 April

  UK housing hit by weak demand with no pickup in sight

  Bloomberg The UK property market is wilting from lack of demand, leaving home prices unchanged for a second month in March. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said its gauge of prices remained at zero, with declines in London and the southeast being offset by gains in the East Midlands, Northern Ireland and Wales. Years of rampant price gains have ...

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• 14 April

  Europe is ground zero for traders’ synchronised-growth dilemma

  

  Bloomberg As recently as January, trading Europe was a pretty straightforward prospect as the euro gained, stocks joined the global rally, and credit spreads ground ever-tighter. What a difference a few months makes. The best year in a decade in terms of euro-area growth has given way to a series of surprisingly weak economic readings across the 19-nation bloc. The ...

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• 14 April

  Internet has a bigger problem than the Facebook fiasco

  

  A word of advice for Congress as it ponders new schemes for internet regulation after the ‘perp walk’ this week of Facebook tycoon Mark Zuckerberg: Don’t do it. Zuckerberg is a very tempting target. His serial apologies show how Facebook became so entangled in its corporate mission to ‘bring the world closer together’ that it stopped putting the customer first. ...

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• 14 April

  India should control its oil addiction

  

  One under-appreciated factor behind Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s success as Indian prime minister has been the tailwind he’s received from low oil prices. Brent crude averaged $99.43 a barrel during his predecessor Manmohan Singh’s second term in office, putting pressure on an economy that’s heavily dependent on imports. It began its precipitous decline from those levels just weeks after ...

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• 14 April

  A Hong Kong dollar at the weak end is no reason to panic

  It’s time to face facts. Interest-rate arbitrage no longer works — the Hong Kong dollar is being driven more by money flows from China. The city’s currency fell to HK$7.85 per dollar last week — the weak end of its permitted band for the first time since the range was imposed in 2005. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority said it ...

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• 14 April

  Trump’s China tariff talk rightly worries retailers

  When you consider what we know so far about the tariffs the Trump administration has recently considered imposing on Chinese goods, you might be tempted to think the retail industry shouldn’t be in panic mode. Yes, items such as televisions and dishwashers are on the list of products the US plans to tax. But, so far at least, key products ...

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