Carillion turns restoration project as bankers called in

Bloomberg In 2014, UK builder Carillion Plc was riding high: it had just won a $434 million contract to build the Royal Liverpool Hospital and was attempting to snap up its struggling rival Balfour Beatty Plc for about $2.6 billion. Three years later, and the former Tarmac business is on life support. Carillion has lost 70 percent of its market ...

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White House takes pitch for healthcare bill to US governors

Bloomberg The Trump administration took its case directly to US governors that the pending Senate health-care bill won’t hurt their residents with insurance, even as critics say it will cut billions in funding and leave millions more people without coverage. “You listen to one side, and they said, ‘Your funding’s not going to be decreased,”‘ said Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, ...

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AT&T plans major organizational changes after deal

Bloomberg AT&T Inc. is planning major organizational changes to follow the $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc., including a redefined role for Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson, as the telecommunications giant morphs into a media company. Stephenson will oversee a pair of CEOs who will independently manage the company’s telecommunications and media businesses, according to people familiar with the ...

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Would Congress act on its war responsibilities?

Predictably and sensibly, a three-judge panel of the nation’s second-most important court, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, recently dismissed, unanimously, a lawsuit brought by a Yemeni man, two of whose relatives were collateral fatalities in a 2012 US drone attack that killed three terrorists. The suit asked the court to declare the attacks illegal under several ...

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RBI bond intervention no scare for market obsessed with rate cut

Traders in India are so convinced that slowing inflation will lead to a rate cut that the central bank’s increasing intervention in the bond market isn’t bothering them. Benchmark 10-year yields, which fell to a two-week low on Wednesday, will probably continue their decline after data showed consumer-price gains slowed to a record low, according to Kotak Mahindra Asset Management ...

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Yellen leaves markets with wrong impression

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s prepared testimony for her semi-annual report to Congress made clear that central bankers are struggling to understand the recent downward trend in inflation. Still, it is important to remember that the path of monetary policy depends not just on inflation, but also on unemployment. Yellen knows this, and it would be a mistake to interpret ...

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Brazilian justice has a long way to go

The conviction of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on corruption charges shows how far justice has come in Brazil. Yet Brazil’s next and stiffer test is in ensuring that allegations about current President Michel Temer receive a full and transparent investigation, and that the execution of justice is not reduced to back-room politics. Brazil’s future — the future ...

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Rooftop solar is no match for crony capitalism

The New York Times ran an article over the weekend about efforts by utility companies to fight the spread of rooftop-solar power: Rooftop solar panel growth has come to a shuddering stop this year, with a projected decline in new installations of 2 percent. Since 2013, Hawaii, Nevada, Arizona, Maine and Indiana have decided to phase out programs that spurred ...

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What should we do about Uber? UK has a few ideas

It’s easy to poke fun at Britain’s government dysfunction. But there’s at least one policy area where it’s having a sophisticated debate with global implications: how to regulate ‘gig economy’ companies such as Uber Technologies Inc. and Deliveroo so they don’t exploit workers or skimp on taxes. Working out new rules for companies that use smartphones to connect buyers and ...

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Amazon Prime Day doesn’t matter. Ask the company

I am giving you permission: You can safely ignore Amazon’s Prime Day, the annual fake shopping holiday Jeff Bezos invented two years ago. True to form, Amazon released a crush of mostly useless statistics about the “success” of its invented holiday. Prime Day 2017 was the “biggest global shopping event in Amazon history”. Prime Day couldn’t even be contained by ...

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