Bloomberg Europe’s antitrust authorities could ease companies’ concerns about the potential fallout from working together by giving them unofficial guidance, according to one of Germany’s top competition experts. Firms in the region are putting off shared projects due to concerns over retroactive regulatory push-back, according to Achim Wambach, a member of a commission created by the German government to review ...
Read More »Norway’s biggest funds warn firms to halt Amazon damage
Bloomberg Norway’s biggest investors, with combined asset under management of about $170 billion, are telling companies to make sure they don’t contribute to environmental damage in Brazil’s Amazon as fires roar through the rainforest. Storebrand ASA and pension fund, KLP, are now reaching out to companies and intensifying their research to map out who’s responsible for any potential damage. Storebrand ...
Read More »US-China feud is ruining Christmas for toymakers
Bloomberg Chinese factories are normally at their busiest during the third quarter, cranking out production of everything from Barbie dolls to miniature trucks in time to ship them over the ocean to the US ahead of the all-important holiday shopping season. This year’s different. Even with President Donald Trump delaying tariffs on $160 billion of toys to smartphones to spare ...
Read More »Queen approves UK’s Johnson plan to suspend parliament
Bloomberg Queen Elizabeth II approved Boris Johnson’s request to suspend parliament for almost five weeks ahead of Brexit. The prime minister’s move sets up a showdown with lawmakers who want to block him from taking the UK out of the European Union without a deal. The pound fell. Privy Council said Queen approved Johnson’s request to prorogue — suspend — ...
Read More »India top court to review change in Kashmir status
Bloomberg India’s Supreme Court has agreed to examine the constitutional validity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to scrap Kashmir’s autonomy but refused to immediately lift an unprecedented state-wide lockdown on communications and movement. The court’s three-judge panel headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said a constitution bench comprising five judges will review the legality of abrogating Article ...
Read More »Duterte to use ‘sea ruling’ to warm China relations
Bloomberg Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday with a plan to play his ace card — an international ruling that invalidated some of Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea. Duterte said he will use the Philippines’ 2016 internationaltribunal win against China, which he set aside to warm ties and tap Chinese funding, to ...
Read More »Hong Kong good citizen applications rise as people eye exit
Bloomberg Interest from Hong Kong residents in leaving the city has surged since street protests broke out in the former British colony. About 200 people showed up at a seminar organised by InvestUK, an adviser that helps people secure investor visas to move to the UK from Hong Kong, in July compared with about 40 people usually, according to the ...
Read More »Cameroon separatists call for lockdown
Bloomberg Separatists in Cameroon called for a lockdown in the country’s Anglophone regions after a weekend of unrest in which at least 40 people reportedly died. The call for a lockdown came a week after a military tribunal jailed 10 rebel leaders including Julius Ayuk Tabe, the self-proclaimed president of the area that separatists have labeled Ambazonia, on charges including ...
Read More »Tanzania agrees to return Burundi refugees home
Bloomberg Tanzania agreed to repatriate Burundian refugees who have been sheltering in two major settlements, the Burundian Interior Minister Pascal Barandagiye told the national broadcaster. Tanzania estimates it has more than 220,000 Burundian refugees who fled from its northwestern neighbour during a political crisis that began in 2015. “There is no reason for refugees to stay in Tanzania†while their ...
Read More »The French are now doing better than the Germans
We’ve become so gloomy about the euro zone that it’s easy to neglect the bright spots. After a very tough 2018 for President Emmanuel Macron, France, the second-largest economy in the monetary union, is faring much better than most experts would have assumed. Its economic model — less reliant on exports than Germany — is proving mo-re resilient to dangers ...
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