August, 2017

• 1 August

  Macron should call Drahi’s bluff

  

  Tycoon Patrick Drahi has been telling everyone lately that he’s going to spend about 15 billion euros ($17.6 billion) building a national fiber broadband network in France. What’s more, he says his local operator SFR Group SA will have it done by 2025 and won’t take the public subsidies used by his rivals. If he follows through on the big ...

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• 1 August

  Don’t succumb to crazy White House fatigue

  

  That was fun. Just 240 or so hours ago, Anthony Scaramucci, absent relevant experience and credentials, became the White House communications director. It was a palace coup that also forced the departures of press secretary Sean Spicer and chief of staff Reince Priebus from the administration of President Donald Trump, and appeared to leave Steve Bannon’s future in doubt as ...

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• 1 August

  Executives are worried about Amazon not Trump

  What keeps corporate leaders up at night? It isn’t the chaos in Washington or rising worker pay. It’s what Amazon.com Inc. is, or could be, doing to their business models, according to a Bloomberg analysis of earnings conference call transcripts. The expanding online behemoth has morphed from a retail category killer to a much broader enterprise that now competes with ...

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• 1 August

  Testing Canada-Mexico ties

  

  Free trade between Canada and Mexico is in part an accident of history: two nations, each the other’s afterthought, came together in their shared race to capitalize on the US market. Now, after President Donald Trump threatened to leave the North American Free Trade Agreement, the pact’s junior partners are working more closely than ever to save it. Trump has ...

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• 1 August

  How the H-1B program fares under Trump…

  

  Despite President Donald Trump’s frequent and public criticism of the H-1B visa program, new data released shows applicants are undeterred. The US government has received more than 300,000 H-1B visa petitions and extensions so far this year, according to data released last Wednesday by US Citizenship and Immigration Services, compared with a total of 399,349 in all of 2016. A ...

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• 1 August

  Can emerging-market discount whet the appetite?

  

  When investors sense that consumer behavior in emerging markets is changing, they tend to shoot first and ask questions later, potentially missing opportunities. It’s well known that such stocks trade at a discount. The MSCI World With EM Exposure Index, which tracks developed-world shares that rely on emerging markets for revenue, was valued at 16.4 times forward earnings at the ...

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• 1 August

  Pence says US backs Georgia in NATO over Russian objection

  

  Bloomberg Vice President Mike Pence said the US “strongly” supports Georgia’s ambition of joining NATO, even as Russia remains hostile to the military alliance expanding its influence in Moscow’s former Soviet backyard. “We see Georgia as a key strategic partner and stand by your territorial integrity and your aspirations to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” Pence ...

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• 1 August

  Sharif loyalist chosen interim Pak premier

  

  Bloomberg Pakistani lawmakers chose Shahid Khaqan Abbasi as the interim prime minister to replace deposed leader Nawaz Sharif, settling political uncertainty caused by a Supreme Court decision last week that forced the former premier to resign. Abbasi, 58, who is considered a die-hard Sharif loyalist after serving in his cabinet as the petroleum minister, won 221 votes out of 305 ...

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• 1 August

  Xi’s party to punish cadres over ‘illegal sites’

  Bloomberg China’s Communist Party is curbing the online activities of its 89 million members ahead of a leadership shake-up in a few months. The new rules made public on Tuesday said that all party cadres face punishment if they visit “illegal websites” or disclose party and state secrets online. Cadres need permission from the party before registering social media accounts ...

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• 1 August

  Venezuelan opp leaders detained at gunpoint

  Bloomberg Venezuela’s most high-profile opposition figures were seized from their homes by security forces, according to people close to them, in what appeared to be a crackdown on officials challenging the government of President Nicolas Maduro. Opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was taken from his home at gunpoint, his wife said, just weeks after he had been transferred from military prison ...

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