April, 2018

• 10 April

  Ireland calls UK Brexit secretary’s comments ‘nonsense’

  Bloomberg Ireland’s deputy prime minister assailed UK Brexit Secretary David Davis’ suggestion that Sinn Fein is influencing the Dublin government as “nonsense,” in the latest sign of tension between the two countries over the UK vote to leave the EU. The Irish government under Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has “quite a strong influence from Sinn Fein” when it comes to ...

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• 10 April

  Donald Trump has lost the confidence of investors

  

  US President Donald Trump likes to equate the rally in stocks since the November 2016 elections with confidence in him and his policies. And yes, the S&P 500 Index has surged 22% since then, but a deeper look at equities, bonds and the dollar reveals anything but trust in his stewardship. Here’s the executive summary: US companies are valued less ...

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• 10 April

  Is the phony US-China trade war over?

  

  With its plans to levy 25% tariffs on $50 billion of US products including soybeans, cars and aircraft, China looks to have stepped the simmering Trans-Pacific economic battle up a gear. The initial parries between Washington and Beijing resulted in little more than flesh wounds. There were a series of levies on steel and aluminum exports to the US, which ...

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• 10 April

  Japan’s automakers should switch to a faster lane

  As Donald Trump works to kick Japan’s automakers out of their largest market, they may want to set their sights on an even bigger prize — China. Authorities in the US are considering making imported cars meet stricter environmental requirements, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing administration and industry officials it didn’t identify. This sort of a non-tariff barrier would ...

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• 10 April

  ‘Stability rules’ win investor vote in Najib’s Malaysia

  How the mood changes. Malaysia is now seen as the best growth story among emerging Southeast Asian markets. Year-to-date, foreign investors bought a net $635 million of the country’s shares, while pulling money out of Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. The FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index has outperformed its peers with an 8 percent rally this year in dollar terms. ...

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• 10 April

  Easy money of stimulus has made life harder for some

  

  The Bank of England (BOE) has often had to fend off charges that years of easy money worsened inequality. It recently released a study concluding the opposite: that nine years of asset purchases that pumped 375 billion pounds ($527 billion) into a faltering world economy didn’t widen inequality after all: Whatever the marginal impact of the extraordinary period of accommodative ...

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• 10 April

  A millionaire mindset never made anyone rich

  

  The past three decades of minimal real wage growth have led some people to wonder why they haven’t gotten ahead. And in much the same way that nature abhors a vacuum, con artists hate missing an opportunity to separate suckers from their money. This might explain why we see a special class of self-help gurus — none of whom were ...

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• 10 April

  Indeed, this is your modern public relations nightmare

  

  If you are looking for examples of companies that do well at public relations, start with what determines personal trust. We often trust people we have met, interacted with and maybe done business with. I think of community banks as enjoying relatively high levels of trust. Millions of Americans have walked through the doors of their local banks and dealt ...

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• 10 April

  ECB still confident after euro area hits economic soft patch

  

  Bloomberg The European Central Bank’s top officials lined up to express cautious confidence in the euro-area economy after a series of reports pointing to a surprisingly weak start to the year, while reiterating that they’ll move only slowly towards ending stimulus. President Mario Draghi and three of his most-senior colleagues signalled that while inflation remains too low and a global ...

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• 10 April

  BNP Paribas expands Poland footprint with Raiffeisen deal

  

  VIENNA / Reuters BNP Paribas is increasing its presence in Poland with the 775 million euro ($954 million) purchase of Raiffeisen Bank International’s (RBI) main business in the European Union’s largest eastern economy. The French bank said it will merge Raiffeisen Bank Polska, Poland’s tenth largest lender by assets, with BGZ BNP Paribas, which it bought in 2014, bolstering its ...

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