July, 2017

• 29 July

  Toshiba to give Western Digital sale notice as fight is on

  

  Bloomberg Western Digital Corp. said it will move forward with arbitration to get a say over Toshiba Corp.’s sale of its chip unit after the Japanese company agreed to provide notice before closing. The companies announced they’d reached an agreement providing for two weeks’ advance notice. The two manufacturers, which are in a joint venture to produce memory chips, submitted ...

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• 29 July

  The slovenly institution that is US Congress

  

  In January 1988, in Ronald Reagan’s final State of the Union address, he noisily dropped on a table next to the podium in the House chamber three recent continuing resolutions, each more than a thousand pages long. Each was evidence of Congress’ disregard of the 1974 Budget Act. Reagan fumed: “…budget deadlines delayed or missed completely, monstrous continuing resolutions that ...

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• 29 July

  Boxing on, or boxed in? Indian banks are splintering

  

  When Moody’s Investors Service polled market participants in Hong Kong recently, 70% picked India’s banking system as the most vulnerable among seven countries in South and Southeast Asia. I wonder what remaining 30% were smoking. As another earnings season rolls on, the weaknesses of Indian lenders are once again obvious. What’s not as apparent, though, is an quadrifurcation of Indian ...

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• 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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