Google made another acquisition for its cloud-computing business that competes with Amazon.com Inc. Each deal it does is a reminder of Google’s failures so far in this lucrative field and a potential warning sign to the software specialists that have thrived in the last decade. Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, said that it was spending $2.6 billion to buy Looker, ...
Read More »Two bull markets are dueling over fate of global growth
Bloomberg For all the shine and sophistication, for all the jargon, robots and quants, financial markets are still only this: Buyers buying and sellers selling, times a billion. Behind every trade — perhaps far behind — there is an actual human person. Two, in fact. And because humans disagree a lot, markets do too. And do they ever disagree just ...
Read More »Mideast stocks rise as traders return to work
Bloomberg Middle East stocks generally advanced on Sunday, catching up with emerging-market peers, as traders returned to work following holidays. Gauges in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Egypt climbed following last week’s increase for the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. Stock exchanges in the Arab world were closed for most of last week due to Eid al-Fitr, the holiday ...
Read More »â€˜Yuan breaching 7 per dollar within 3 months’
Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc expects the yuan to weaken past 7 per dollar in the next three months — a level the currency hasn’t breached in more than a decade. The bank revised its forecasts for the yuan against the dollar because it sees the currency’s decline as a natural offset to higher US tariffs, even if policymakers are ...
Read More »India eases bad-debt resolution rules
Bloomberg The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) eased rules to give lenders laden with bad debt more time to resolve delinquent accounts and lifted a deadline for pushing defaulters into bankruptcy courts. The directive, which also covers shadow banks, gives lenders 30 days to review a delinquent account and a further 180 days to implement a resolution plan, loosening the ...
Read More »Blockchain’s appeal limited for retail banks
Bloomberg Retail banks have been slower to embrace blockchain technology and face greater challenges in reaping its potential benefits than their more adventurous co-unterparts in investment-banking world, according to new research from McKinsey & Co. Headwinds for retail lenders to adopt a shared system of distributed computer ledgers to manage day-to-day activities include a tougher regulatory environment for consumer finance ...
Read More »BOJ to cut negative rate in September: JPMorgan
Bloomberg The Bank of Japan (BOJ) will lower its short-term interest rate to -0.3 percent from -0.1 percent in September to head off risks posed by an expected Federal Reserve rate cut, JPMorgan Chase & Co. said in a research note. Fed cuts are now expected in September and December after escalating US-China trade tensions have raised the risk that ...
Read More »Draghi’s rate-cut plan fails to sway investors
Bloomberg Mario Draghi’s insistence that he’s determined to revive euro-zone inflation with interest-rate cuts and renewed bond purchases if needed isn’t convincing investors. The European Central Bank president talked a tough game after policy makers extended their pledge to keep borrowing costs at record lows and announced more cheap loans to banks. Yet traders pared bets on a rate cut, ...
Read More »Fitch slashes Deutsche Bank rating to BBB
Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG’s credit rating was cut by Fitch Ratings, which cited the firm’s lack of progress in improving operations. The bank’s long-term issuer default rating was downgraded to BBB from BBB+, Fitch said in a statement. “The downgrade of Deutsche Bank reflects its continued difficulty and limited progress in improving its profitability and stabilising its business model,†Fitch ...
Read More »Lawmakers seek documents on 737 Max faulty sensor alert
Bloomberg House lawmakers demanded records from Boeing Co, one of its suppliers and US aviation regulators on why a cockpit alert that might have helped pilots in two fatal 737 Max crashes was installed with a defect that the planemaker didn’t plan to fix it until 2020. Representative Peter DeFazio, the Oregon Democrat who heads the House Transportation and Infrastructure ...
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