The Uber boycott sparked by the company’s refusal to join an anti-Trump strike poses a question many US businesses will have to answer: Do they openly stand with those of their customers who abhor the president’s policies or does it make more business sense for them to stay neutral? The #DeleteUber movement appears to be something of a disaster ...
Read More »PBOC resumes reverse repo sales after six-day halt
Bloomberg China’s central bank restarted the use of an instrument that adds cash to the financial system, helping ease liquidity concerns before $153 billion of funds come due this week. The monetary authority sold a total 100 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) of reverse-repurchase agreements, the first auction after a six-day pause, a statement posted on its website showed. While ...
Read More »RBS to plan more than $1 billion of expense reductions
Bloomberg Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) is preparing to cut more than 1 billion pounds ($1.25 billion) of annual operating costs by eliminating jobs and closing branches as it seeks to bolster profitability, said a person with knowledge of the plans. While the Edinburgh-based lender probably won’t reveal a headline figure for role reductions, senior executives have determined ...
Read More »Deutsche Bank under scrutiny in Russia over tax practices
Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG, which last month settled charges that it helped investors launder money through its business in Moscow, remains under scrutiny in Russia over its tax practices. “As part of an ongoing routine audit, Deutsche Bank is working with Russian tax authorities on matters relating to standard business operations that follow normal industry practice,†the Frankfurt-based lender ...
Read More »Tycoon eyes StanChart’s Indonesia bank stake in March to top
Bloomberg Indonesian business tycoon Tahir is keen to gain control of PT Bank Permata, a larger rival to his PT Bank Mayapada International, as he seeks to put his lender in the ranks of the nation’s biggest banks. Tahir’s Mayapada Group wants to buy the 90 percent of Permata that is owned by Standard Chartered Plc and PT Astra ...
Read More »China tech tycoons see sinking healthcare dreams
Bloomberg In 2014, billionaire Jack Ma, founder of online retail giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., declared his ambition to make China’s hospitals better, drugs cheaper and people healthier. Others in China’s tech universe were becoming equally bullish on health care, and that year alone, investment in the internet health sector surged about sevenfold to $1.4 billion. Since then, billionaire ...
Read More »Chinese auto sales weaken in January as sales tax rises
BEIJING / AP China’s auto sales shrank in January following a sales tax increase, an industry group reported on Monday. Sales in the world’s biggest auto market declined 1.1 percent from a year earlier to 2.2 million, compared to December’s 9.1 percent expansion, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Total vehicle sales, including trucks and buses, rose ...
Read More »India inflation eases more than expected
Bloomberg India’s inflation grew at its slowest pace on record even as the central bank unexpectedly held interest rates in its monetary policy review last week. Consumer prices rose 3.17 percent in January from a year earlier, the Statistics Ministry said in a statement in New Delhi on Monday. That’s slower than the 3.24 percent median estimate in a ...
Read More »Narayana Murthy calls off battle with Infosys board
Bloomberg Infosys Ltd.’s co-founder and former chairman Narayana Murthy is calling off his fight with the board, saying the company will deal with the questions about corporate governance that have been raised. Billionaire Murthy and several other founders had raised questions about the management of Asia’s second-largest IT services company, citing a spike in compensation for Chief Executive Officer ...
Read More »Japan’s GDP highlights export risks that Abe hopes to curb
Bloomberg The strength in exports that fueled a fourth straight quarter of economic growth in Japan underscores just how important it is for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to ease trade tensions with the Trump administration. Net shipments abroad added 0.2 percentage point to gross domestic product in the three months through December, while consumption in Japan was flat as ...
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