Bloomberg Kuwait joined the United Arab Emirates in promising to pump less oil after Saudi Arabia called on fellow OPEC producers to cut more supply to help curb the global glut. Kuwait Petroleum Corp. has agreed with customers in the US to reduce contractual sales volumes of oil for 2017, state-run KPC said. The announcement came after UAE Minister of ...
Read More »Oilfield rush to high-tech helps smaller companies thrive
Bloomberg A wave of next-generation upstarts is hitting America’s oil patch, offering high-tech solutions aimed at an industry in flux following the worst crude-market crash in a generation. At a time when the five biggest oilfield servicers — still smarting from the price rout — have cut almost $1 billion from their research budgets, companies such as Ambyint Inc. are ...
Read More »Starbucks suffers worst rout in two years, targets China
Bloomberg Starbucks Corp. suffered its biggest stock decline in almost two years after cutting its forecast, renewing fears about sputtering growth at the world’s largest coffee chain. The shares dropped as much as 8.2 percent to $54.63 in New York, the biggest intraday plunge since August 2015. Slowing growth in the US forced Starbucks to cut its profit forecast for ...
Read More »HNA Group seeks more arrangers for delayed property IPO
Bloomberg HNA Commercial REIT is seeking to add arrangers to its planned Singapore initial public offering as Bank of America Corp. walks away from the deal, people with knowledge of the matter said. The property trust, backed by embattled Chinese conglomerate HNA Group Co., has been reaching out to investment banks to gauge their interest in taking a senior role ...
Read More »Toshiba to give Western Digital sale notice as fight is on
Bloomberg Western Digital Corp. said it will move forward with arbitration to get a say over Toshiba Corp.’s sale of its chip unit after the Japanese company agreed to provide notice before closing. The companies announced they’d reached an agreement providing for two weeks’ advance notice. The two manufacturers, which are in a joint venture to produce memory chips, submitted ...
Read More »The slovenly institution that is US Congress
In January 1988, in Ronald Reagan’s final State of the Union address, he noisily dropped on a table next to the podium in the House chamber three recent continuing resolutions, each more than a thousand pages long. Each was evidence of Congress’ disregard of the 1974 Budget Act. Reagan fumed: “…budget deadlines delayed or missed completely, monstrous continuing resolutions that ...
Read More »Boxing on, or boxed in? Indian banks are splintering
When Moody’s Investors Service polled market participants in Hong Kong recently, 70% picked India’s banking system as the most vulnerable among seven countries in South and Southeast Asia. I wonder what remaining 30% were smoking. As another earnings season rolls on, the weaknesses of Indian lenders are once again obvious. What’s not as apparent, though, is an quadrifurcation of Indian ...
Read More »Greece still hasn’t turned the corner
Greece returned to the private debt market this week for the first time in years, raising 3 billion euros at a relatively affordable interest rate of 4.6 percent. That’s encouraging news — but it doesn’t mean the euro zone’s most flattened economy is on course for sustained growth. The economy is showing signs of life, growing a bit in the ...
Read More »Trump’s Twitter habit destabilizes the world
Like the rage of Achilles, Donald Trump’s tweets are sudden, explosive and freighted with tragedy. Yesterday brought the most foreboding yet. “After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……†And then: nothing. For a full nine minutes, the world was left to ponder what those ominous six ...
Read More »Why Uber is losing out to locals in Southeast Asia
By any measure, the April 2016 decision by Uber Technologies Inc. to sell its China operations to rival Didi Chuxing was a defeat. The brief but spectacular battle between the two ride-hailing behemoths had cost Uber at least $2 billion and earned it little more than the enmity of the Chinese government. The only silver lining seemed to be that ...
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