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Break out the bubbly: Global financial regulators are starting to cooperate for the greater good as the Brexit deadline looms ever closer. Just don’t mistake an uneasy truce for a lasting peace. The agreement between EU securities regulator Esma and the Bank of England is another step towards creating a post-Brexit safety net for the $400 trillion global derivatives market, ...

And just like that, this is no longer Marvin Ellison’s J.C. Penney Co. The department store chain said it is going to get out of the business of selling major appliances. With this move, new CEO Jill Soltau has reversed course on a key initiative of Ellison, her predecessor in the top job at the troubled retailer. This decision does ...

Time to liberate Australia’s economy. It needs to be freed from folklore that’s built up around the 27-year stretch sans recession. The reality is that the expansion waxed and waned during that period. Business cycles aren’t dead Down Under, despite Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s only half-joking proposition in November that they are defunct in Australia. It’s waning now. That’s ...

The first results of Finland’s two-year experiment with a universal basic income (UBI) are in, and if they’re confirmed by further research, they will probably hurt the unconditional income cause. The trial run showed that “money for nothing” makes people happier but doesn’t inspire them to find work anymore than traditional unemployment benefits would. The Finnish experiment, conducted in 2017 ...

A US hedge fund is taking on the British government and major banks in protest at the pain inflicted on ordinary shareholders in the latest rescue of a troubled UK construction company. It is picking a tough battle, but its plan is far from doomed. The company in question, Interserve Plc, revealed outline details of a restructuring package designed to ...

Just a year ago, India’s third-largest mortgage lender was bragging about how it had shrunk its financing costs by replacing bank loans with market borrowings. Now, Dewan Housing Finance Corp. is confronting the fallout of that seemingly clever strategy, one that many of its peers face as well: a dangerously high exposure to India’s struggling developers. At the end of ...

Bloomberg As stock rebounds go, this one has been big, sudden, and decidedly broad, with signs megacap titans are relaxing the stranglehold in which they’ve held the S&P 500 for two years. While the rally took a breather last week, it remains the best annual start for US equities in almost three decades, with $1.7 trillion added to share values. ...

Bloomberg Treasuries traders may get a feeling of deja vu next week — they’ll be contending with some familiar geopolitical risks as they also absorb key economic data that could help solidify expectations for Federal Reserve policy. Brexit negotiations, trade talks and the specter of another US government shutdown loom against the backdrop of growing concern over the global economy. ...

Bloomberg Societe Generale SA is shrinking its markets business and cutting an additional 500 million euros ($567 million) of costs to combat the market rout that sent trading revenue tumbling. The Paris-based bank is replacing global markets head Frank Drouet and cutting about 8 billion euros ($9.1 billion) of risk-weighted assets. SocGen will review less profitable fixed-income and currencies activities ...

Bloomberg Romania left borrowing costs unchanged as the central bank complains that surprise tax measures to shore up the budget are restricting its ability to function. The benchmark was kept at 2.5 percent for a sixth straight meeting, matching the predictions of all but one economist surveyed by Bloomberg. The fiscal package, which triggered the country’s biggest market crash since ...