Anyone who doubts China could produce the next Roche Holding AG or Pfizer Inc. need only look at the country’s cancer figures: More than 4 million new patients or close to 12,000 per day diagnosed in 2015, the latest public data available. Global investors have settled on a favored contender in Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine Co., whose Shanghai-traded shares have surged ...
Read More »Wells Fargo may not be done paying for its misdeeds
Wells Fargo & Co.’s $1 billion settlement with regulators already has some saying that this marks the end of a troubled period for the scandal-plagued bank. That might be wishful thinking. Part of the reason for the optimism is the size of the fine. Wells Fargo paid only $185 million for its fake-account scandal, which impacted as many as 3.5 ...
Read More »Trump stress-tests the world economy
Taking stock of the global economy as finance ministers and central-bank governors gathered in Washington for its spring meetings, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found reason for concern. “[R]isks beyond the next several quarters clearly lean to the downside,” it reports. Well, that’s hardly unusual — the IMF exists to be concerned. Rarely, though, has it had better grounds. To ...
Read More »India’s banking system needs a stronger watchdog
To many economists, the solution to India’s bad-loan crisis appears as obvious as the problem: Privatize state-owned banks, which have racked up billions more in soured loans and performed much worse than their private-sector counterparts. Yet, unless the government first strengthens its ability to supervise all banks, public and private, selling some of them off will be slim guarantee against ...
Read More »No, the UK won’t rejoin Europe anytime soon
Outside of Britain it’s commonly assumed that the country regrets its decision to leave Europe. Indeed European Parliament Brexit Representative Guy Verhofstadt suggested recently that one day the UK might rejoin the EU. It’s also a view some inside Britain cling to as well; and yet there’s very little evidence to support it. Ever since the Brexit vote in June ...
Read More »Mexico and its workers didn’t hit the jackpot with Nafta
Since 1993, the year before the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) went into effect, per capita gross domestic product in Mexico is up about 26 percent in real terms. That’s a lot better than the outright decline in per capita GDP that the country had experienced over the course of the 1980s. But it’s nowhere close to the 41 ...
Read More »ECB sees scope to wait until July meeting to signal QE end
Bloomberg European Central Bank policy makers see scope to wait until their July meeting to announce how they’ll end their bond-buying program, according to euro-area officials familiar with the matter. Governing Council members want sufficient time to judge if the economy is overcoming its first-quarter slowdown, the officials said, asking not to be identified because the internal deliberations are confidential. ...
Read More »Number of German banks declines as fintechs attack
Bloomberg Even before Bundesbank will publish its annual statistics on the consolidation in the German banking industry in May, there are already indications that the total number of banks and branches has dropped even further. Banks from abroad or those focussing on very specific customer groups are among the few that are expanding. The number of savings and cooperative banks, ...
Read More »Barclays chief fined in whistle-blowing probe
Bloomberg Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley survived a year-long regulatory probe into his attempts to unmask a whistle-blower, escaping with a fine instead of losing his job. While the UK Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority will impose a financial penalty on Staley for failing to behave “with due skill, care and diligence†in the scandal, they ...
Read More »Hong Kong interbank rate rises to four-month high
Bloomberg The Hong Kong dollar’s interbank borrowing costs rose to their hig-hest level this year, as the city’s de facto central bank bought more of the currency to defend its peg to the greenback. The three-month interbank rate — known as Hibor — climbed for a fourth day to reach 1.32 percent, the highest since December 27, as the Hong ...
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