The world’s publicly listed utilities employed 3.7 million people, had a third of a trillion dollars in capital expenditures, and brought in $2.2 trillion in revenue in 2017. Power supply is an enormous industry. It’s also an industry that would still be recognisable to utility executives from a century ago. Delivery of electricity, natural gas and water will remain part ...
Read More »Keeping a billionaire’s satellite dream spinning
If you’re a foreign bidder bent on a controversial takeover of a UK company, you can do worse than use the playbook Softbank Group Corp turned to when it acquired chip designer Arm Holdings in 2016. Start with a knock-out offer the target just can’t refuse, and pay in cash rather than your own wobbly shares. With the board on ...
Read More »Beware China equity bulls promising rich returns
The next time an analyst tells you that China stocks look cheap, take it with a grain of salt. In Asia’s biggest economy, key accounting metrics such as return on equity are dead. Mainland shares are among the worst in the region, with the CSI 300 Index down 16 percent since January despite its members averaging double-digit revenue growth and ...
Read More »Brexit brouhaha cannot beat dollar weakness
You’d hardly know there was a UK political crisis going by looking at the pound. Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plan was so distasteful to one of her leading cabinet ministers that he quit — surely that is a recipe for the currency to tank. And yet, sterling managed to climb to its highest in almost a month versus the ...
Read More »Mid-sized asset managers ride into valley of death
Rumours of the demise of medium-sized asset managers have proved to be greatly exaggerated, so far. But a combination of rising costs, a stagnant pool of profit and dwindling revenue in the next five years will hasten a divide in the industry between bigger firms enjoying economies of scale, and smaller specialists that can justify charging higher fees by excelling ...
Read More »Want faster economic growth? Embrace diversity
During the past four decades, the US has become much more racially and ethnically diverse. The share of non-Hispanic white people residing in the country is now only 62 percent, while Hispanics and Asians together make up 22.5 percent. Since 2014, less than half of the kids born in the US have been born to two non-Hispanic white parents. Some ...
Read More »7-Eleven lands in Vietnam, aims for 100 stores
Bloomberg For decades, Vietnamese have shopped, snacked and hung out at the country’s traditional markets: colorful, chaotic mazes of open air stalls where vendors hawk everything from fruits and vegetables, to sandwiches and sodas to the odd clucking chicken. Seven-Eleven is pushing a different model. The Japanese-owned chain in August opened its first outlet in the country, an air-conditioned, Wi-Fi ...
Read More »London Stansted owner sees quick fix for Brexit aviation threat
Bloomberg London Stansted and Manchester airports owner MAG said it sees a relatively easy fix for the potential grounding of flights between the UK and European Union in the event of a so-called hard Brexit. The existing open-skies regime that permits unfettered flying by EU airlines within the bloc could easily be maintained by adopting a structure “mimicking†the status ...
Read More »Air France-KLM shares jump on June traffic rise, CEO speculation
Bloomberg Air France-KLM shares jumped the most in more than a year after a French newspaper reported that the troubled carrier is getting closer to appointing a new boss, and June traffic figures were better-than-expected. The French government — the airline’s biggest shareholder — is pushing Catherine Guillouard, who heads Paris metro operator RATP, as the future chief executive officer, ...
Read More »Amazon doesn’t scare Chilean mall operator poised for IPO
Bloomberg Amazon may be the bogeyman for many a business, and shopping mall investors have been among the most frightened. But MallPlaza’s not scared. The Chilean mall operator is prepping for an IPO this month, and its executives have been shrugging off the threat posed by the titan of e-commerce in recent meetings with analysts, citing the frequent addition of ...
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