Britons tucked into J. Sainsbury Plc’s value-priced turkey crowns, costing 9 pounds, over the festive period. But its disappointing performance risks turning the group itself into the feast for Britain’s other big supermarkets. Sainsbury said like-for-like sales across the group fell 1.1 percent in 15 weeks to January 5, missing analysts’ expectations for a 0.3 percent decline. True, the reporting ...
Read More »Trump is losing the shutdown argument
The recent presidential address and the response from Democratic Party’s leaders in Congress offered little prospect that the stand-off over President Trump’s wall will be quickly resolved. As yet, neither side looks ready to back down or seek compromise. For this to change, public opinion may need to shift. Encouragingly, last night’s exchange suggests it soon might — against Trump. ...
Read More »In 2019, aluminum is the market to watch closely
On the long list of leading indicators that market participants attempt to use to figure out where the economy may be headed, don’t overlook aluminum. Despite the many market-soothing words uttered by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and former chairs Janet Yellen and Ben S. Bernanke at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting in Atlanta, economic and market risks have ...
Read More »A trade deal between US, China is only half the fight
Equity markets have been rallying on the prospect that the trade-related cloud hanging over the global economy could be lifting. The S&P 500 index is up more than five percent, buoyed both by last week’s strong US jobs figures and the sense of momentum in talks between US and Chinese negotiators. The two countries can reach a deal they “can ...
Read More »Google knows you better than doctor
Thanks to a combination of Google, WebMD and the $6,000 deductible on my health insurance, I haven’t been to a doctor to talk about an illness in years. Millions of Americans have similar habits; in fact, one in 20 Google searches are for health-related information. “Dr. Google” may not have an MD or a board certification, but it does have ...
Read More »The story of mutiny, surrender in India’s banking elite
Chandra Shekhar Ghosh is a new arrival on India’s banking scene. Billionaire Uday Kotak is a seasoned campaigner and Asia’s richest banker. No wonder then that Ghosh is falling in line with a central bank command, while Kotak is suing. The disputes concern the founders’ maximum permissible ownership. The Reserve Bank of India is pushing the largest shareholders of Ghosh’s ...
Read More »Cutting economic outlook kept growth risks balanced: ECB
Bloomberg European Central Bank (ECB) officials agreed that a cut to their 2019 growth projection in itself acknowledged that risks to the outlook for the euro-area economy had increased. That effectively allowed President Mario Draghi to avoid saying in December that the balance of risks was to the downside, which would have jarred alongside a decision to halt bond buying ...
Read More »China’s biggest bank cuts space at New York’s Trump tower
Bloomberg Two of China’s New York power players are pulling back from Trump — Trump Tower, that is. First, a big Chinese conglomerate, HNA Group Co, moved to sell a Manhattan office tower four blocks from Trump Tower after US authorities raised national security concerns. A deal has finally been cut. Now, China’s biggest bank, Industrial & Commercial Bank of ...
Read More »Deutsche Bank sued over $53mn tax bill
Bloomberg M.M. Warburg & Co, a private bank under investigation in Germany over a series of controversial tax deals, has opened a new legal front by suing Deutsche Bank AG to pick up the bill. Warburg filed a suit in Frankfurt in December to force Deutsche Bank to pay a 46 million-euro ($53 million) tax bill the company received over ...
Read More »UBS to make Orcel wait for new CEO gig
Bloomberg Andrea Orcel, the former top dealmaker at UBS Group AG, will have to wait until April to take on his new role as chief executive officer at Banco Santander SA after the Swiss bank decided to enforce his entire six-month garden leave, people familiar with the matter said. Orcel was expected to make the move early in the first ...
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