‘Swim or sink’ outlook prompts Asia shipping to face mergers

  Bloomberg Swim or sink: That’s the message shipping executives in Asia are taking into the new year. Faced with a prolonged trade slowdown and depressed freight rates, the region’s container lines are set for further consolidation after a year that’s seen the collapse of South Korea’s Hanjin Shipping Co., a mega merger among Japanese rivals and the sale of ...

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Toshiba shares recover from early plunge on accounting report

  Bloomberg Shares of Toshiba Corp. recovered from an early dive after the Asahi newspaper reported regulatory concerns about the company’s earnings. Toshiba rose 2.3 percent to 289.6 yen as of 11:13 a.m. in Tokyo after slumping as much as 6.9 percent in early trade. Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission suspects the company padded earnings by about 40 billion ...

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Euro-area inflation outpaces expectations as crude surges

  Bloomberg Euro-area inflation accelerated in December at the fastest pace since 2013, suggesting that a debate about the appropriate degree of European Central Bank stimulus is about to gather momentum. Consumer prices rose 1.1 percent from a year earlier, following a 0.6 percent gain in November, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said on Wednesday. That’s above a ...

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Tesla deliveries miss forecasts on production delays

  Bloomberg Tesla Motors Inc. reported fourth-quarter deliveries that fell short of its own forecasts, sending shares lower in after-market trading, as production delays continue to plague the carmaker led by Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk. The Palo Alto, California-based maker of electric cars and energy-storage products delivered about 22,200 vehicles in the final three months of last year, according ...

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Manhattan home prices fall to lowest in 4 years

  Bloomberg Manhattan resale home prices tumbled by the most in more than four years, a sign that sellers are lowering their expectations in a slowing market where buyers have the option to walk away. The median price of previously owned condominiums and co-ops fell 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier to $900,000, according to a ...

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AT&T to test 5G for delivery of ‘DirecTV Now’ to homes

  Bloomberg AT&T Inc. has reached speeds of up to 14 gigabits a second in lab trials of 5G wireless technology, and plans to test the high-speed network by beaming its DirecTV Now video service to homes in Austin, Texas before midyear. Through a collaboration with a dozen partners including Intel Corp., Ericsson AB and Qualcomm Inc., AT&T plans to ...

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Obama was indeed transformational, ‘alas’

Any summation of Barack Obama’s impact on domestic policy and politics should begin with this: In 2008, he assured supporters, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” Soon he will be replaced by someone who says, “I alone can fix it.” So, Americans have paid Obama the compliment of choosing continuity, if ...

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Fantasy land is where deposits fuel an Indian loan boom

  Three months ago, Gadfly advised India’s state-run banks to stop lending because they didn’t have the capital to keep up appearances. That was before the surprise November 8 cash ban, which led to a deluge of low-cost deposits into the system. Add a government eager to dispel criticism that getting rid of 86 percent of the currency in circulation ...

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Leave the high seas to the fish

  The high seas — all that deep water beyond 200 nautical miles from a coastline — are this planet’s last frontier. And like all previous frontiers, they’re ripe for plunder. But there may be a surprisingly simple solution to the scourge of overfishing on the high seas: a ban on commercial fishing in international waters. The proposition may sound ...

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