Bloomberg Counterfeit goods, software piracy and the theft of trade secrets cost the American economy as much as $600 billion a year, a private watchdog says. In a report out on Monday, the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property says the annual losses range from about $225 billion to $600 billion. The theft of trade secrets alone ...
Read More »Blackstone, Prudential to win in $16bn loan sale
Bloomberg Blackstone Group LP and Prudential Plc were picked as preferred bidders for about 12.5 billion pounds ($16 billion) of UK mortgages made by failed lender Bradford & Bingley, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The New York private-equity giant and London-based insurer were among winners in a contest overseen by UK Asset Resolution Ltd., a ...
Read More »GM dials up discounts on pickups as rivals tread on truck turf
Bloomberg General Motors Co. boosted incentives on its pickup models this month after its biggest foes gained ground, intensifying a price war within the US auto market’s most hotly contested segment. Discounts averaged about $6,996 for the Chevrolet Silverado and $5,315 for the GMC Sierra this month through February 12, according to J.D. Power dealer data obtained by Bloomberg ...
Read More »Russia’s global hacking efforts are far from a ‘ruse’
One of the most startling allegations in a January report by US intelligence agencies about Russian hacking was this sentence: “Russia has sought to influence elections across Europe.†This warning of a campaign far broader than the US got little attention in America. We may be missing the forest for the trees in the Russia story: The Kremlin’s attempt ...
Read More »Winters’ coming turnaround is a long wait for StanChart
Standard Chartered Plc’s shares soared over the past year on hopes that CEO Bill Winters was turning around the troubled emerging markets lender. From Friday’s disappointing earnings, it appears investors had run ahead of themselves. There’s still no sign of a return to dividends, and the growth outlook is far from strong. While StanChart swung to a pretax profit ...
Read More »Welcome, new cosmic neighbours!
To adapt the Bard: “O, wonder! … O brave new world.†Or seven of them, as it happens. Researchers revealed on Wednesday that they’ve uncovered these intriguing planets swirling outside the solar system, all of them rocky and Earth-sized. Three seem temperate enough to support life. And all are orbiting a small, dim star just 40 light-years away. The ...
Read More »Close EU-UK economic ties mutually beneficial
Anti-Brexit campaigner and many European leaders had warned Britain of huge economic loss after it quits EU. But the other side of the coin is that even European Union will lose on multiple fronts due to Brexit. EU would not just be losing a vital component, but also one of its richest countries, with its biggest defense budget and ...
Read More »Losing 4.3bn barrels of oil is good news for Exxon
Losing 4.3 billion barrels of reserves could be just what Exxon Mobil Corp. needed. There’s no denying that having almost one in five barrels of oil equivalent of your proved reserves slip off the books, as Exxon announced this week, isn’t the company’s finest hour. Coming just after Exxon took a $2 billion asset impairment, it looks like newly ...
Read More »JPMorgan, facing its annual check-in, has a to-do list
JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s market value has surged by about 60 percent in the past 12 months to $326 billion, making it the largest U.S. lender by that measure. But when executives, shareholders and analysts gather for the bank’s investor day next week, they may have other yardsticks on their minds. The New York-based bank has yet to meet ...
Read More »Taiwan’s war against Uber is likely to be fruitless
This should be a good time to be an American Internet company in Taiwan. The new president, Tsai Ing-wen, has pledged to build an Asian Silicon Valley on the island. And the new American president, Donald Trump has threatened a trade war with Taiwan’s rival in mainland China. The stars would appear to be aligned. So it’s surprising that ...
Read More »