July, 2017

• 29 July

  Greece still hasn’t turned the corner

  

  Greece returned to the private debt market this week for the first time in years, raising 3 billion euros at a relatively affordable interest rate of 4.6 percent. That’s encouraging news — but it doesn’t mean the euro zone’s most flattened economy is on course for sustained growth. The economy is showing signs of life, growing a bit in the ...

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• 29 July

  Trump’s Twitter habit destabilizes the world

  Like the rage of Achilles, Donald Trump’s tweets are sudden, explosive and freighted with tragedy. Yesterday brought the most foreboding yet. “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……” And then: nothing. For a full nine minutes, the world was left to ponder what those ominous six ...

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• 29 July

  Why Uber is losing out to locals in Southeast Asia

  

  By any measure, the April 2016 decision by Uber Technologies Inc. to sell its China operations to rival Didi Chuxing was a defeat. The brief but spectacular battle between the two ride-hailing behemoths had cost Uber at least $2 billion and earned it little more than the enmity of the Chinese government. The only silver lining seemed to be that ...

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• 29 July

  Imax China needs another kind of hero

  

  Imax China Holding Inc. has a bigger challenge than a Chinese box office in the doldrums. Barring a surprise hit or two, the Hong Kong-listed subsidiary of Imax Corp. needs a strategy overhaul to win fans. The giant-screen operator posted a 6.3 percent drop in first-half revenue to $51.6 million, sending profit down 7.1 percent to $16.5 million. That drove ...

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• 29 July

  There’s one place the US still dominates in Asia

  

  For all the talk of America’s decline and China’s rise, Asians still seem obsessed with events in one corner of Washington, D.C.: the Federal Reserve. This week’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee was the first I’d observed from Asia in 15 years. During that period, China’s economy has grown from about the size of Italy’s to surpass Germany ...

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• 29 July

  Instagram posts to soon help sniff out tax fraud in India

  

  Bloomberg A photo of your shiny new car on Instagram or the Facebook post about your chic holiday cottage may lead India’s taxman to your door. Starting next month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will begin amassing a warehouse of virtual information collected not just from traditional sources like banks but also from social media sites, as it looks to ...

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• 29 July

  Samsung profit, sales surpass estimates on chips, S8 smartphone

  

  Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co.’s quarterly profit and revenue topped analysts’ estimates, fueled by the success of its new Galaxy S8 smartphones and demand for semiconductors. Net income rose to a record 10.8 trillion won ($9.6 billion) in the three months ended June, the Suwon, South Korea-based company said in a filing, exceeding the 9.75 trillion won average of projections compiled ...

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• 29 July

  Slack Technologies raises $250mn in funding from SoftBank, others

  

  Bloomberg Slack Technologies Inc. is raising about $250 million in a funding round co-led by SoftBank Group Corp., according to people familiar with the matter, as the Japanese investment firm helps drive a new venture capital boom. Investors in the round are expected to value the San Francisco-based company, which sells software for workers to communicate with their colleagues, at ...

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• 29 July

  FB signals more urgency about building chat businesses

  

  Bloomberg Facebook Inc.’s investors are salivating over the revenue potential for the company’s chat businesses, Messenger and WhatsApp, after CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he’d like to move “a little faster” to make money from them. The company has warned that sales growth, fueled primarily by mobile advertising, will slow because it can’t keep loading ads into users’ news feeds on ...

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• 29 July

  Wells Fargo cuts 70 managers amid fake-accounts scandal

  

  Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co., the lender struggling to overcome a fake-accounts scandal in its community bank, said the division’s new leader is cutting about 70 senior executive jobs. The lender will reduce the number of regional and area presidents to 91, Mary Mack, head of the retail bank, said Friday in a memo to staff, a copy of which ...

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