March, 2018

• 25 March

  Ex-Catalan president Carles Puigdemont detained in Germany

  

  Bloomberg Police detained former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont as he crossed into Germany from Denmark by car, bringing his eventual return to Spain to face trial a step nearer. Puigdemont was attempting to return to Belgium after a visit to Finland, his lawyer Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas said by phone on Sunday. A spokesman for the police in Germany’s northern state of ...

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• 25 March

  Italy populists sideline mainstream as partners vie for premiership

  

  Bloomberg After outmaneuvering establishment parties to emerge as lead negotiators in Italy’s search for a new government, the populist pair Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini seek to win enough support this week to justify their rival claims for the premiership. Di Maio of the Five Star Movement and Salvini of the anti-migrant League, each short of a majority after ...

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• 25 March

  S Africa’s ANC discusses bringing polls forward

  

  Bloomberg South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, is discussing the possibility of bringing forward elections set to be held next year, according to three people familiar with the talks. The ANC is considering the move amid a wave of positive sentiment following the rise of Cyril Ramaphosa as president of Africa’s most industrialised country. He succeeded Jacob Zuma, ...

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• 25 March

  Scandal clouds Abe’s chance of changing constitution

  Bloomberg Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reiterated his apology on Sunday for a cronyism scandal as opposition lawmakers warned it would hamper his ambitions of changing the country’s pacifist constitution. Public anger over the revelation that Finance Ministry officials doctored documents relating to the discounted sale of public land to a school operator with connections to Abe’s wife sent his ...

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• 25 March

  Could this Trump nominee interfere with Mueller?

  

  Here’s a new twist in the Robert Mueller saga: A former top Senate staffer for Attorney General Jeff Sessions is nearing confirmation to head the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. Should his appointment worry people who want to protect the special counsel’s independence? As with any issue involving Mueller and the Trump White House, the answer reflects the supercharged atmosphere surrounding ...

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• 25 March

  Stocks need ‘GDP growth’ to prosper

  

  Forecasting the long-run return on equities is one of the key challenges in financial planning. Jeremy Siegel, the author of “Stocks for the Long Run,” wrote that he had examined 210 years of stock returns and found that “the real return on a broadly diversified portfolio of stocks has averaged 6.6 percent per year.” Public pension funds make similar assumptions. ...

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• 25 March

  No one wins in this battle for an orphaned asset class

  

  It looks a victory for aggrieved bondholders. Aviva Plc has had enough bad press and has kicked controversial plans to cancel its preference share class into the long grass. The decision isn’t entirely charitable. The British insurer may also have been influenced by the fact that likely cost of issuing new perpetual debt was beginning to tick up. But this ...

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• 25 March

  Washington shouldn’t shut the door on Chinese students

  As part of its continuing campaign to prevent China from stealing American intellectual property, President Donald Trump’s administration is considering restrictions on the number of Chinese citizens enrolled at US colleges and universities. Targeting foreign students will undermine US competitiveness, not enhance it. Of the 1 million foreign nationals enrolled at US schools, nearly one-third are from China — double ...

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• 25 March

  Robots won’t take all jobs as humans demand new things

  

  Predicting the course of technological progress is extremely difficult. Just because worries about human obsolescence ultimately turned out to be misplaced in the Industrial Revolution doesn’t mean that the same happy result must necessarily prevail this time around. So the persistent question about artificial intelligence — or ‘robots’ in common parlance – is whether they will make human workers obsolete. ...

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• 25 March

  Everyone gets how badly BOE wants to hike rates

  

  Communication received loud and clear. The Bank of England (BOE) did just enough to keep interest rate expectations alive for a hike in its key interest rate in May to 0.75 percent — and beyond. The switch to a 7-2 vote at March 22 policy decision, with the most voluble hawks Michael Saunders and Ian McCafferty reverting to wanting an ...

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