Germany’s least popular ECB head gets its highest honour

Bloomberg Former European Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi will get Germany’s highest honor this week, though probably not its undying love. German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier will give the country’s Order of Merit to the Italian, whose ultra-loose stimulus, including quantitative easing and negative interest rates, embittered many citizens in the euro region’s biggest economy. Unlike his predecessors, Jean-Claude Trichet ...

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Peso, rupiah can carry on best amid virus volatility

Bloomberg The Philippine peso and Indonesia’s rupiah are Asian carry trades most insulated from the coronavirus outbreak, as the pandemic shows no sign of abating. That’s based on comparative performance before and after January 20, when concerns about the disease escalated with reports that human-to-human transmission was occurring. The top performers were the onshore yuan, rupiah and the offshore yuan, ...

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Airlines suspend more flights to China over virus spread

Bloomberg Airlines across the globe suspended more flights to China, as governments clamped down on travel to help stop the spread of the deadly Wuhan virus. British Airways halted daily routes to Beijing and Shanghai from London’s Heathrow airport, after UK officials advised against non-essential travel. The UK flag carrier said it would reassess over the next few days. Hong ...

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SAA to get $239mn from state-run bank

Bloomberg South African Airways’s (SAA) business-rescue team said it’s been given access to 3.5 billion rand ($239 million) from the state-owned Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) to avert the airline’s collapse. The team will immediately draw down 2 billion rand from the facility, they said in a statement. SAA has already cancelled some flights this month to save cash ...

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De Beers diamond sales soar

Bloomberg De Beers sold the most diamonds since April in a sign the industry is starting to recover from a slump in demand last year, though the market will require more evidence of a sustained rebound. The Anglo American Plc unit sold $545 million of diamonds in its first sale of the year, traditionally one of the strongest buying periods ...

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Kobe Bryant copter company had four crashes in 35 years

Bloomberg Island Express Helicopters Inc, the California-based charter company involved in the latest crash that killed retired basketball star Kobe Bryant, has been involved in four previous crashes over the past 35 years, two of them fatal, according to government records. While the company hasn’t had an accident since 2008, it was cited in 2016 for failure to perform mandatory ...

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Ryanair warns of job cuts on 737 Max delays

Bloomberg Ryanair Holdings Plc will reconsider its summer schedule and has warned employees of job cuts and base closures due to the protracted grounding of Boeing Co’s 737 Max jet, according to a memo to staff seen by Bloomberg. Europe’s biggest low-cost airline will redraw its summer 2020 timetable with 10 fewer planes, as it now only expects the first ...

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China virus outbreak sparks a global run on face masks

Bloomberg People across the globe are stockpiling facial masks to protect themselves from the new coronavirus, depleting online malls and store shelves from California to Beijing. Yet their efficacy against an outbreak that’s claimed more than 130 lives remains uncertain. On Amazon and Alibaba, many shops peddling anti-virus masks had run out of stock as of Wednesday. Across China, Hong ...

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Prosecutors raid ex-Ghosn lawyer’s office

Bloomberg Tokyo prosecutors raided the offices of a former lawyer for Carlos Ghosn, likely searching for documents that could be related to the indicted former auto titan’s escape to Lebanon from Japan, public broadcaster NHK reported. The lawyer, Junichiro Hironaka, has denied any involvement in helping Ghosn flee and a person who answered the phone at his Tokyo office on ...

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Virus prompts India top cotton trader to stop sales to China

Bloomberg Kotak Commodity Services Pvt, one of India’s top cotton exporters, will stop selling new cargoes to China on concern the spread of coronavirus may force the top buyer of the fiber to close ports and banks. The Mumbai-based company will look for new buyers of cotton in countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam to make up for ...

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