December, 2017

• 4 December

  India’s tech giant Infosys future comes in a choice of three flavours

  

  Infosys Ltd’s incoming CEO Salil Satish Parekh faces three choices: He can create a more valuable company, return cash to shareholders, or kick the can to a new set of owners. Unlike his predecessor, who got into a messy skirmish with the company’s still-powerful co-founders, Parekh will have some latitude to choose his strategy. For one thing, he has the ...

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• 4 December

  Akzo should seize victory from defeat in Axalta debacle

  Akzo Nobel NV boss Thierry Vanlancker has the chance of a second stab at a jumbo chemicals deal with US peer Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. He should grab it. Axalta’s negotiating position has been weakened after it started talks with Japan’s Nippon Paint Holdings Co. Ltd. last month, having already entered into discussions with Akzo about a possible all-share merger. ...

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• 4 December

  China needs to make sure Pakistan isn’t Venezuela

  Might this be China’s new Venezuela? Beijing’s frenzied drive to create a modern Silk Road puts Pakistan front and center, much as Venezuela was once a target of lending by China Development Bank as the nation sought to secure oil supplies. Of the $6 billion to $7 billion of current development projects in Pakistan as part of the China-Pakistan Economic ...

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• 4 December

  China isn’t taking over the world just yet

  

  Almost daily, newspapers in the US, Europe and China release eye-catching headlines about China’s technological advances and economic prowess. The accomplishments are real. But they’re not necessarily evidence of Western failure or Chinese invincibility. In touting such achievements, commentators too often overlook the structural factors that have shaped them. Economists now recognize just how much of economic interaction is driven ...

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• 4 December

  The long and the short of bitcoin’s diverse futures

  

  “Why did the market go up today?” “There must have been more buyers than sellers.” That piece of circular logic is a sort of laconic joke among traders, equivalent to saying: “I have no idea.” Naturally, prices will only rise if the enthusiasm of buyers outweighs the fear of sellers. At the same time, it captures a worthwhile nugget of ...

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• 4 December

  The economics data revolution has growing pains

  

  By now, most people who read about economics have heard about the empirical revolution in the field. An economist used to be someone who spun theories out of reasonable-sounding assumptions to tell stories about why the world works the way it does. Nowadays, economists still have to understand theory, but their day-to-day work involves combing through data and crunching statistics. ...

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• 4 December

  BofA’s Brexit planners mull bigger Paris move after exit

  

  Bloomberg Bank of America Corp. has been debating proposals from Chief Operating Officer Tom Montag’s subordinates to rapidly build out a European trading hub in Paris, according to people with knowledge of the talks. Montag and some of the firm’s most senior leaders recently discussed whether to alter a tentative plan to send a few hundred employees to the French ...

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• 4 December

  China banking stress indicator eased for fifth-straight quarter

  

  Bloomberg A warning indicator for banking stress in China fell for a fifth-straight quarter, signaling that the leadership’s drive to squeeze risk from the financial system is making progress. China’s credit-to-gross domestic product “gap” declined to 18.9 percent in the second quarter from 22.1 percent in the first three months of this year, according to data released by the Bank ...

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• 4 December

  BOJ’s Kuroda dismisses concerns over tightening

  

  Bloomberg Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda gave the clearest signal yet that his recent comments about the “reversal rate” theory weren’t an indication of tighter monetary policy in the coming year. The BOJ’s yield-curve control program, partly intended to address the impact of monetary easing on Japanese banks, has been successful and hasn’t created any problems for financial ...

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• 4 December

  PM adviser says RBI misguided on prices

  

  Bloomberg The Indian central bank’s tendency to overestimate inflation has prevented it from cutting interest rates further and cost the economy, according to one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s advisers. “Their view of the economy doesn’t seem to be correct,” and by keeping rates high, they “have imposed a high output sacrifice,” said Ashima Goyal, a member of Prime Minister’s ...

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