Virgin Atlantic names Weiss new CEO as Branson cedes control

Bloomberg Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd. said commercial head Shai Weiss will take over as chief executive officer as billionaire founder Richard Branson prepares to cede majority control of the UK carrier. Craig Kreeger will stand down as chief at the end of this year, with Weiss taking the helm on January 1, 2019, the Crawley, England-based company said. The switch ...

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US plans new curbs on Chinese investment, citing security risk

Bloomberg The Treasury Department is planning to heighten scrutiny of Chinese investments in sensitive US industries under an emergency law, putting Washington’s trade war with Beijing on a potentially irreversible course. Under the plan, the White House would use one of the most significant legal measures available to declare China’s investment in US companies involved in technologies such as new-energy ...

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EU businesses cut UK ties over Brexit

Bloomberg British businesses aren’t the only ones unhappy with the state of Brexit negotiations. Companies in the rest of the European Union aren’t thrilled either. Exactly two years after the referendum, nearly half of 800 executives surveyed across six EU countries by law firm Baker McKenzie said their businesses had reduced investment in the UK since the Brexit vote, according ...

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Blackstone to raise $5bn for infrastructure fund

Bloomberg Blackstone Group LP is nearing a first close of $5 billion for its inaugural infrastructure fund, according to people familiar with the matter. The fundraising, expected to be finalised this week, is slightly behind schedule but will mark the biggest initial close for a first-time fund across any alternative investment strategy after SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund and the ...

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GE to sell power unit to Advent for $3bn

Bloomberg General Electric Co. is nearing the sale of its factory power-generation unit to Advent International for at least $3 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. The private equity firm apparently triumphed over a competing bid from Cummins Inc. and a transaction may be announced, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter who weren’t identified. The assets include ...

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Trump’s metal import tariffs yielded more than $775mn

Bloomberg The Trump administration has collected more than $775 million so far from its metal import tariffs, as lawmakers from both parties blasted the duties and said the process for requests by companies for exclusions must improve. The tariffs President Donald Trump imposed in March have generated $582 million from steel imports and $195 million from aluminum as of last ...

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Trump is hurling a wrecking ball towards trans-Atlantic ties

A bright banner at NATO’s lavish new headquarters here proclaims the core conviction of the trans-Atlantic alliance: “We are together. We are strong.” But the words seem a bit hollow these days, as President Trump escalates his attacks on America’s traditional European partners. Trump’s “America First” policies have shaken many of the nations that looked to Washington as their ally ...

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Corbyn’s terrible economic idea

The UK Labour Party’s plan to set the Bank of England a productivity target must rank among the worst ideas ever conceived for a central bank. It runs against pretty much everything economists believe should be the role of a monetary authority. And it would amount to an outright admission of defeat by elected politicians, whose task it is to ...

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ECB bond change pulls the rug from long end

It certainly appears dovish that the European Central Bank (ECB) expects to reinvest even more of its maturing holdings next year, as Bloomberg News reported. It’s even more so if, as President Mario Draghi has suggested, officials relax the rules on how much time they can take to make reinvestments — more flexibility here gives them room to smooth ructions ...

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Greece’s deal leaves too much to chance

The government must be ecstatic, and the prime minister’s tailor even happier. Greece has secured a much more generous than expected deal that should allow it to put its bailout behind it and let Alexis Tsipras put on the tie he promised to forgo until the country’s debt woes were over. But there remains one sticking point: whether the country ...

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