As Brexit vote looms, who is the real Theresa May?

British Prime Minister Theresa May is doing something politicians almost never do: She is charging into a battle she will almost certainly lose. Does she have a plan to survive and lead the aftermath or, like the Spartan Leonidas at the Battle of Thermopylae, will she sacrifice herself and her troops for a position she can’t hold? How the weeks ...

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Japan’s SoftBank may be milking its cash cow dry

Japanese investors salivating at the juicy 5.4% dividend yield available from the initial public offering (IPO) of SoftBank Group Corp.’s telecom unit should rein in their excitement. It won’t last. The $23.5 billion IPO of Softbank Group’s cash-cow wireless carrier, which will confusingly trade on the Tokyo Stock Exchange as SoftBank Corp., is a hit among Japan’s traditionally conservative investors, ...

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Forecasts for 2019 will be wrong, random or worse

This is the time of year for annual reckonings and predictions by strategists and analysts, illustrating little more than that they know what pleases their employers and that their powers of prognostication are non-existent. Yet, full of bravado and confidence, they explain what stocks to buy, when a recession will come along, what the Federal Reserve is going to do, ...

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US stocks rally on renewed trade hopes; pound climbs

Bloomberg US stocks joined a global rally as the outlook for trade took a positive turn and confidence grew that the British prime minister will defeat a challenge to her leadership. Chipmakers and energy producers led the S&P 500 Index higher following gains in Europe and Asia after the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co. was granted bail and ...

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Asia stock traders hit ‘buy’ as US-China trade magic returns

Bloomberg The power of news headlines is back, and a renewed dose of trade optimism is finally lifting Asian stocks from a six-week low. To be exact, the regional benchmark is heading for its biggest jump since December 3, when the market reacted to Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping’s dinner in Buenos Aires. Huawei Technologies Co.’s chief financial officer ...

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Fed piles up $66 billion in paper losses

Bloomberg The Federal Reserve is piling up unrealised losses on its $4.1 trillion bond portfolio, raising questions about its finances at a politically dicey moment for the independent central bank. The Fed had losses of $66.5 billion on its securities holdings on September 30, if it marked them to market, according to its latest quarterly financial report. That dwarfed its ...

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Credit Suisse set to buy back $3bn shares

Bloomberg A year ago, Tidjane Thiam asked Credit Suisse Group AG shareholders to stay with the bank through its restructuring. Those that did may still be left wanting more. Switzerland’s second-largest bank plans to buy back as much as 3 billion francs ($3 billion) of shares in the next two years, while increasing the dividend by at least 5 percent ...

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Goldman, Citi see risks for Hong Kong banks

Bloomberg Hong Kong’s banks are staring at a tough year for business, marred by lower demand for loans and a peak in local property prices. Goldman Sachs Group Inc cut the lenders’ loan-growth estimates and target prices. Citigroup Inc said the banks’ shares may drop as much as 15 percent in 2019. “A cyclical slowdown in loan growth has been ...

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RBI chief faces long to-do list in new job

Bloomberg India’s new central bank governor has a list of challenges to face as he takes office: from fixing a banking crisis to convincing investors of the institution’s autonomy. Shaktikanta Das, 61, a former economic affairs secretary at the Finance Ministry, took charge at the Reserve Bank of India for a three-year term on Wednesday, two days after Urjit Patel ...

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UBS signs pact to use Microsoft cloud services

Bloomberg UBS Group AG reached a deal worth hundreds of millions of Swiss francs to use Microsoft Corp cloud services in a bid to reduce costs while complying with strict Swiss privacy laws, according to people familiar with the matter. Switzerland’s largest bank may begin to store data at Microsoft’s purpose-built facilities near Zurich and Geneva as soon as next ...

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