Hyundai Heavy breakup paves way for more deals

  Bloomberg The world’s second-largest shipbuilder has split itself into four companies, a move that would facilitate a potential sale of some of the businesses. Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. started trading as four entities on Wednesday as the conglomerate tries to insulate the group from a financial crisis at any one of its divisions. The breakup splits the operations into ...

Read More »

China factory price gains more sluggish that forecasts

  Bloomberg China’s producer price gains slowed more than expected in April, adding to signs of a potential easing of global reflation fueled by the world’s second-largest economy. Producer price index rose 6.4 percent from a year earlier, versus a 6.7 percent Bloomberg survey estimate and 7.6 percent gain in March. Consumer price index climbed 1.2 percent, versus 0.9 percent ...

Read More »

China’s belt-road plan may top $500bn

  Bloomberg China could pour more than half a trillion dollars into its Belt and Road Initiative, and the push for greater global influence looks even more promising with US President Donald Trump pulling back from engagement, according to Credit Suisse Group AG. The plan could funnel investments worth $313 billion to $502 billion into 62 Belt-Road countries over the ...

Read More »

Canada’s largest gas-station owner may set sights on US

  Bloomberg In the past five years, Parkland Fuel Corp. has more than tripled its market value by snapping up gas stations, propane distributors and other types of fuel sellers across Canada. Its next wave of acquisitions may be in the US. Since Chief Executive Officer Bob Espey took the helm in 2011, Parkland has struck 18 deals valued at ...

Read More »

Price boom far from over in $450bn Danish mortgage market

  Bloomberg After half a decade of negative interest rates, Denmark’s housing market looks like it can only move in one direction: up. Michael Rasmussen, the chief executive officer of Nykredit Realkredit A/S, the biggest Danish mortgage lender, says the “tailwind” looks like it will last. “We have a strong real estate market and we, of course, benefit from that. ...

Read More »

On re-examination, the euro doesn’t look so bad

  It’s always worth re-evaluating one’s views, and my latest revision is that the euro currency is better and less vulnerable than I had thought. I still believe its creation and later expansion were mistakes, but I now see them as much smaller mistakes than before. Many of the biggest costs lie in the past, so the euro might be ...

Read More »

Why Buffett hasn’t delivered a big deal

  There’s certainly no shortage of cash lying around at Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Even so, Warren Buffett’s struggle to find the $407 billion company’s next meaningful acquisition shows that his relative buying power has diminished. If you attended or streamed the shareholder meeting on Saturday, you heard a lot about Berkshire’s soaring cash pile, which stood at $96.5 billion as ...

Read More »

Goofing off at work masks rising productivity

  In his new book “The Complacent Class,” my Bloomberg View colleague Tyler Cowen mentions that more Americans may be slacking off at work. He offers this as one more measure of the comfortable malaise into which American culture has settled. But it also occurs to me that if leisure is replacing effort at work, it means that the country ...

Read More »

Saudi near flat on varying Q1 results, Qatar rebounds

  DUBAI / Reuters First quarter results from major companies drove trading on Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange on Wednesday, with the Riyadh index edging 0.2 percent higher, while Qatar’s bourse outperformed as investors bought shares on recent price dips. Majority state-owned Saudi Electricity (SEC) rose 2.2 percent in trading that exceeded its one-month average daily volume after the company swung ...

Read More »

US stocks set to drop as dollar slips, oil gains

  Bloomberg US stock futures slipped and the dollar’s rally faltered after Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Oil climbed following an industry report that showed American stockpiles declining for a fifth week. The greenback headed for the first drop in three days in the wake of Trump’s move, and after Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan ...

Read More »
Send this to a friend