December, 2017

• 19 December

  Britain’s labour cost growth picks up to fastest

  Bloomberg British labour-cost pressures appear to be building, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics. The cost of employing someone for an hour of work rose 3 percent in the third quarter compared with a year earlier, the fastest pace since the April-June period in 2016, the ONS said on Tuesday. From the previous quarter, labor ...

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• 19 December

  WhatsApp gets one month to stop data sharing with Facebook

  

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc.’s messaging service WhatsApp was given a one-month ultimatum by one of Europe’s strictest privacy watchdogs, facing an order to stop sharing user data with its parent without getting the necessary consent. France’s data protection authority CNIL gave a sharp warning to WhatsApp by issuing a formal notice, criticising it for “insufficiently” cooperating. The decision comes a year ...

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• 19 December

  German business optimism slips from high on economic nerves

  

  Bloomberg German business confidence unexpectedly weakened in December, while remaining close to its record, in a sign of nerves over the outlook for Europe’s largest economy. The Ifo Institute’s gauge of business sentiment declined to 117.2 from a revised 117.6 the previous month. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg predicted a reading of 117.5, matching November’s original number. Ifo’s gauge remains near ...

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• 19 December

  Silicon Valley working to bring startup hub to the Vatican

  

  Bloomberg It’s quite a cocktail: throw in some profit-seeking techies, mix in the age-old Roman Catholic Church and add a twist of anti-globalism. What you get is a startup hub. A year ago, venture capitalists Stephen Forte of Fresco Capital Fund and Eric Harr of Imagine Ventures—both based in California— asked the Vatican to back a technology competition among startups ...

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• 19 December

  GDP as a measure of national wealth has a blind spot

  

  When you read words like ‘output,’ ‘economic growth’ or ‘national income,’ you’re almost always reading about gross domestic product. This measure, more than any other, has come to be equated with national prosperity and living standards. We use it to compare countries with each other, and also to compare the present with the past. But GDP misses many important things. ...

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• 19 December

  What’s up, WhatsApp? Google is beating plastic in India!

  

  Google CEO Sundar Pichai can count the early success of Tez, the online payment system he custom-built for India, as a promising start to a gruelling fight. The first click in online shopping is shifting away from search engines like Alphabet Inc.’s Google to e-commerce behemoth Amazon.com Inc. But Google isn’t bowing out. Even with more product searches beginning within ...

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• 19 December

  Tencent doubling down on retail shouldn’t be a surprise

  

  Tencent Holdings Ltd. is doubling down on retail. Investors shouldn’t act so surprised. Days after confirming plans to pay around 4.2 billion yuan ($635 million) for a 5 percent stake in Yonghui Superstores Co., the Chinese social-media king announced it would outlay a similar amount for a similar stake in Vipshop Holdings Ltd. Yonghui operates a chain of supermarkets, Vipshop ...

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• 19 December

  Net neutrality war rages on in US

  The net neutrality war rages on. Last week Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, dismantled rules the Barack Obama administration put in place in 2015 requiring internet service providers to treat all internet traffic the same. Supporters are elated, and opponents are rending their garments: Presumably, then, the decision is of vast significance. Actually, it’s hard to say ...

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• 19 December

  Yorkshire pensioners own an A380 superjumbo. Is that wise?

  

  What do German dentists and architects have in common with Yorkshire council workers? Bizarrely, they’re all part-owners of Airbus A380s. Airbus SE is struggling to sell the A380 and a second-hand market hasn’t become established yet. But Airbus isn’t the only one facing a problem: German retail investors and British pension funds have savings tied up in alternative investment vehicles ...

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• 19 December

  ECB sends a warning to buyers of bank bonds

  

  For a central banker, nothing beats a (non) decision on interest rates as a way to bury some bad news. Amid the excitement of last week’s meeting of the European Central Bank (ECB), the regulator slipped out some unwelcome changes to its rule-book: banks will no longer be able to use some senior unsecured bonds as collateral when getting funding ...

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