July, 2016

• 28 July

  Inequality key to downturn of Russian retail demand

  

    Bloomberg Russian consumer numbers don’t add up. A record slide in retail sales for 18 months has been immune to gains in employment and wages, improving confidence and inflation at less than half last year’s level. Widening wealth disparity may be the key to the unprecedented collapse in demand, according to Alfa Bank and VTB Capital. “We attribute the ...

  Read More »
• 28 July

  Carrefour Q1 profit beats estimates on Europe

  

    Bloomberg Carrefour SA, France’s largest retailer, reported higher first-half earnings and maintained its full-year outlook as European revenue held up despite bad weather. Recurring operating income rose 5.3 percent at constant exchange rates to 706 million euros ($781 million), the eighth straight increase, Boulogne-Billancourt-based Carrefour said on Thursday in a statement. Analysts predicted 683.5 million euros, the average of ...

  Read More »
• 28 July

  Housing boom spurs Canada lumber surge

  

    Bloomberg With Americans buying more new homes than at any time since the recession, the cost of the wood used to build them is getting a lot more expensive. Lumber prices are off to their biggest rally in more than a decade, touching a 19-month high last week as demand increased from builders. But almost a third of all ...

  Read More »
• 28 July

  Komatsu’s Q1 profit falls 52% as demand droops

  

    Bloomberg Komatsu Ltd., the Japanese maker of construction and mining machinery that last week offered to buy Joy Global Inc. for about $2.89 billion, said first-quarter profit fell 52 percent as demand languished in strategic markets such as the Middle East and Indonesia and the stronger yen crimped overseas revenue. Net income fell to 15.6 billion yen ($149 million) ...

  Read More »
• 28 July

  Airbnb rentals planned by Japan firm on tourist boom

    Bloomberg Star Mica Co., a Tokyo-listed real-estate company founded by an ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker, plans to double returns from apartments using Airbnb to house tourists from abroad. The company owns about 2,500 apartments mostly in Tokyo, and is considering renting some of them to overseas visitors from as early as next year using services such as that ...

  Read More »
• 28 July

  Schneider raises margin on construction improvement

    Bloomberg Schneider Electric SE raised its earnings forecast for the year on improving construction markets in the U.S. and Europe with the exception of the U.K., where the company is expecting a slowdown following the Brexit vote. The world’s biggest maker of low- and medium-voltage equipment increased the target for adjusted Ebita margin improvement to 0.6 to 0.9 percentage ...

  Read More »
• 28 July

  Brooklyn office developers chasing tech tenants face slowdown

  

    Bloomberg Developers racing to turn Brooklyn into a thriving technology office market may be finding Manhattan a less-fruitful target for poaching tenants. Leasing in Manhattan by tech, advertising, media and information tenants — known to real estate brokers by the acronym TAMI — fell in the second quarter to the lowest level in more than three years, according to ...

  Read More »
• 28 July

  FB pushes more people to an app they didn’t choose

  

      AP Facebook is once again getting pushy about how people message one another. Two years ago, the social-media giant forced its users to adopt its Messenger app for direct communication, a change it enforced by deactivating messages in the main Facebook app and steering users to the app. There was an uproar, some users thought Messenger violated their ...

  Read More »
• 28 July

  1bn iPhones have been sold: Apple

  

    AFP Apple announced the sale of its billionth iPhone, a milestone for the company as it seeks to keep momentum in a competitive smartphone market. Chief executive Tim Cook made the announcement at a staff meeting at the company’s California headquarters. “IPhone has become one of the most important, world-changing and successful products in history,” he said in a ...

  Read More »
• 28 July

  Bluetooth speakers top ‘smart’ choices

  

    Relaxnews According to new research from Technavio, as the Internet of Things begins to grow in popularity, no smart home will be complete without at least one set of wireless Bluetooth speakers. Portable speakers that sync with tablets, smartphones, PCs and TVs are already a huge hit among consumers and every Consumer Technology Association (formally the Consumer Electronics Association) ...

  Read More »