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Masayoshi Son to the rescue. It helps to have the SoftBank Group Corp. founder on your side when Chinese regulators are raining on your IPO party. Lufax, the online wealth manager that’s among the world’s biggest start-ups, has hired five banks to work on a Hong Kong initial public offering of as much as $5 billion, according to IFR. SoftBank’s ...
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December, 2017
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10 December
In the Arctic ocean, at least, diplomacy works
Amid resurgent nationalism and talk of nuclear war, it’s been a rough year for global diplomacy. So a 10-party agreement to protect the waters of the planet’s far north qualifies as a minor miracle. For the next 16 years, commercial fishing will be prohibited in the central Arctic, a Mediterranean-sized patch of icy ocean more than 200 nautical miles from ...
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10 December
UK’s housing market is still a money machine
Punters who wanted to bet against Britain in the run-up to the Brexit vote thought they’d found the perfect target in Berkeley Group Holdings Plc, a London-focused homebuilder partly reliant on inflows of foreign capital to purchase it’s very expensive homes. Throw in a government decision to increase property transaction taxes and penalize purchases of buy-to-let homes, and you had ...
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10 December
Bigger deficits for bad tax cuts is a bad deal
Tax debates make for strange bedfellows. During the long, slow recovery from the Great Recession, Americans became accustomed to a familiar economic debate — Keynesians, usually aligned with the Democratic Party, would call for more government spending in order to stimulate the economy, while Republicans would call for cuts in outlays. Eventually, a compromise was reached, though dangerous theatrics were ...
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10 December
Altice billionaire stays in his $59bn comfort zone
Patrick Drahi, the telecoms billionaire whose debt-fuelled expansion spree is running out of steam, is finding it hard to break free of a downward markets spiral. A full-blown bear attack is still ongoing after last month’s profit warning from Altice SA, the Drahi holding company. Hedge funds have piled up negative bets on a stock that’s fallen 56 percent since ...
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10 December
Here is the 2018 outlook for major central banks
With the ongoing synchronized pick-up in global growth, systemically important central banks will likely be more willing and able in 2018 to start and, in one case continue, the normalisation of monetary policy. But what is true for the central banking community as a whole is more nuanced when assessed at the level of individual institutions. Here is the outlook ...
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10 December
Pound to face twin forces of BOE, Brexit once again
Bloomberg With an initial Brexit deal out of the way, pound traders will be focussing on whether optimism over that lasts and shifts the Bank of England’s thinking this week. Even with an agreement to move Brexit talks on to trade and no expectations for the BOE to change interest rates, news on either front could drive the currency, according ...
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10 December
Major markets rise, led by Saudi and Egypt
Reuters Major Gulf stock markets rose on Sunday in line with strength in global bourses at the end of last week, with Saudi Arabia and Egypt leading. The Saudi index rose 0.8 percent points to 7,145, bouncing for a second straight day from technical support around 7,000 points in very heavy trade. Real estate firm Dar Al Arkan, the most ...
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10 December
IMF: China’s banks need to raise capital buffers after credit boom
Bloomberg China’s banks should increase their capital buffers to pro- tect against any sudden economic downturn following a credit boom, the International Monetary Fund said. In its first comprehensive assessment of China’s financial system since 2011, the IMF recommended “a gradual and targeted increase in bank capital.†In a worst-case scenario, IMF stress tests suggested the country’s lenders would face ...
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10 December
BofA, Citigroup to advise on $3bn IPO of ICICI brokerage arm
Bloomberg ICICI Securities Ltd., a unit of India’s largest private-sector lender by assets, has picked arrangers for an initial public offering that could value the company at more than 200 billion rupees ($3.1 billion), people familiar with the matter said. The brokerage arm of ICICI Bank Ltd. selected Bank of America Corp (BofA) and Citigroup Inc. to advise on the ...
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