Bloomberg US lawmakers plan to pressure the Trump administration to closely scrutinise T-Mobile US Inc.’s planned purchase of Sprint Corp., arguing the acquisition poses a threat to American security because the owner of Sprint has ties to Chinese telecommunications company Huawei Technologies Co. A draft letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who leads a US national security review of the ...
Read More »No-deal Brexit will wreak havoc on UK business: Minister
Bloomberg Failure to reach a Brexit deal would wreak havoc on British business, especially manufacturers that rely on just-in-time supply chains. That’s the view of Business Minister Richard Harrington, who in an interview defended the right of companies to openly voice their concerns. “It would be completely disastrous for business in this country,â€Harrington said. Four months after Prime Minister Theresa ...
Read More »UK services sector growth hits 8-month high
Bloomberg The UK’s dominant services sector grew at the fastest pace in eight months in June, driving a bounce back in the nation’s economy and boosting the case for a Bank of England rate increase as soon as next month. The unexpected gain in the gauge of activity followed reports this week showing faster growth in manufacturing and construction. IHS ...
Read More »Buoyant euro-area services drive pick-up in growth momentum
Bloomberg The euro area’s services sector expanded at a faster pace than initially estimated in June, as the industry drove a pick-up in the bloc’s growth momentum. A purchasing managers’ index for the region climbed to 55.2 last month, higher than an earlier flash estimate of 55 and up from 53.8 in May, IHS Markit said on Wednesday. The survey ...
Read More »Android fine may come in mid-July as EU dances around Trump
Bloomberg It’s no secret that Google is set for another round of hefty antitrust fines. The decision could come as soon as July 18, judging by the gaping hole in the European Commission’s calendar the week after US President Donald Trump visits Brussels. But while the size of the penalty will grab the headlines — after last year’s record 2.4 ...
Read More »Trump’s tariff plan is a car crash for Germany
If Donald Trump had his way, the US wouldn’t import any German cars at all. “Build them here!” he barked in a recent tweet threatening 20 percent tariffs on European automakers. No matter that the Germans have invested billions of dollars in US plants and their employees build hundreds of thousands of cars in the country annually, many of them ...
Read More »Chinese money should play by rules
Global worries over trade wars, central bank rate hikes and geopolitical instability have hammered emerging-market debt in recent months. The fact is, over the past decade, many developing and low-income countries have simply borrowed too much. They borrowed from the markets, from banks and from other countries. In particular, they borrowed from China, which has averaged more than $100 billion ...
Read More »The euro has finally stopped its self-harming
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has proved once again she is the ultimate political survivor. As the immediate threat of a collapse of her government coalition passes, so does one source of some of downward pressure on the euro. That pressure has been pretty substantial over the past two months, and the blowup in Italian politics in mid-April was just a ...
Read More »Japanese businesses don’t cower amid trade gloom
So much for the trade war apocalypse. While many headlines feature gloom about the precarious state of relations between the US and its economic partners, Japan’s most widely watched indicator has some sunny patches worthy of attention. Japanese companies plan a surge in capital spending in the year through March 2019, according to the central bank’s quarterly Tankan survey released ...
Read More »Forget banks and worry about high stock prices
It’s time for investors to stop fighting the last war. The next downturn most likely won’t be triggered by another meltdown of the financial system. The Federal Reserve has concluded its stress test of big banks, a look into whether they have enough money set aside to withstand another 2008-type financial crisis. The Fed announced that all 35 banks examined ...
Read More »