A handful of companies on Friday filed to go public, bolstering expectations of a strong second quarter for the US listings market after the float of Snap, the owner of the messaging app. The market for initial public offerings is heating up after a slow period. With 111 deals, last year was the weakest one for US IPOs since the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2009, […]
By Mitra Taj and Marco Aquino | LIMA LIMA Peru needs more international aid to help hundreds of thousands of people cope with continuing floods and mudslides that have killed more than 100 people and torn apart much of the country’s infrastructure, the transportation minister said Friday. Minister Martin Vizcarra told Reuters that the government will likely award reconstruction contracts in August or September, once heavy rains […]
When Unilabs, the Swiss medical diagnostics business owned by private equity firm Apax, sought buyers to refinance its loans this month, it was by invitation only. The decision to restrict who could buy its loans, while also cutting typical investor protections, is a classic sign of a red-hot credit market in which private equity owners are emboldened to sideline investors who will be more demanding should a […]
Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com, If you’ve been paying attention to the ongoing degradation of the American economy since the last financial crisis, you’re probably flabbergasted by the fact that our economy has managed to make it this far without imploding. I know I am. I find myself shocked with every year that passes without incident. The warning signs are there for anyone willing to see, […]
By Girish Gupta and Andrew Cawthorne | CARACAS CARACAS Venezuelan authorities called on the Supreme Court on Saturday to review its decision this week to annul the opposition-led congress, which critics have decried as a “coup” and a lurch into dictatorship. President Nicolas Maduro said in an address on state television in the early hours of the morning that the conflict between the Supreme Court and National […]
By Kentaro Hamada and Taro Fuse | TOKYO TOKYO Toshiba Corp will likely miss a third deadline to report its quarterly business results, two sources told Reuters, forcing the Japanese conglomerate to ask for a fresh extension or face a possible delisting from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. A third postponement of the October-December earnings, past the latest deadline of April 11, looks necessary because Toshiba’s auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers […]
By Simon Lewis and Wa Lone | YANGON YANGON Myanmar goes to the polls on Saturday for the first time since Aung San Suu Kyi’s party swept to power a year ago, in an early indication of views on her leadership amid increased fighting with armed ethnic groups and slower economic growth. The by-elections will fill 19 vacant seats in the national and regional parliaments at a […]
Facebook and other platform companies publishing news are forces for bad journalism not good, despite some well-intended efforts lately to help media companies. That’s the conclusion of a massive, 25,000-word report, “The Platform Press,” published Wednesday by Emily Bell of the Columbia School of Journalism’s Tow Center and co-author Taylor Owen. The rapid shift to news reading directly on platforms is as big a transformation as digital […]
“Trying to fight ISIS while pretending that we can ignore the Syrian civil war that was its genesis and fuels it to this day is a recipe for more war, more terror, more refugees, and more instability,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Thursday night. Photo Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, left, with Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign […]
Hedge funds betting on a sharp drop in global equities suffered further this quarter, while the broader industry’s returns lagged behind those of US and European stocks. The flagship fund of Crispin Odey, who for several years has been warning of a violent bursting of a bubble inflated by central banks, is narrowly down for the year. The fund endured a nearly 50 per cent decline last […]
Silicon Valley tech companies should do more to help media companies get subscribers and revenues – this was the gist from six panelists discussing “Journalism + Silicon Valley: The Balance of Power” at a recent event in San Francisco organized by the Tow Center for Digital Journalists. The event marked the release of Tow Center’s report: “The Platform Press: How Silicon Valley reengineered journalism |” It is […]
CARACAS Venezuela’s murder rate rose to an average 60 per day last year, up from about 45 per day in 2015, the attorney general’s office said on Friday, as a deep economic and political crisis exacerbated violence in the country. Official data put the murder rate at 70.1 per 100,000 inhabitants last year, one of the highest in the world and up from 58 in 2015. Violent […]
By Antoni Slodkowski | YANGON YANGON The leader of a Rohingya Muslim insurgency against Myanmar’s security forces said on Friday his group would keep fighting “even if a million die” unless the country’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, took action to protect the religious minority. Attacks on Myanmar border guard posts in October last year by a previously unknown insurgent group ignited the biggest crisis of Suu […]
WASHINGTON The White House on Friday backed top aides’ comments that the United States is not now focussed on making Syrian President Bashar al-Assad leave power, saying the U.S. focus is on defeating Islamic State militants. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Thursday drew criticism for playing down a long-standing U.S. goal of persuading Assad to leave power […]
Latin American dictators once sent in tanks and soldiers. This week, Venezuela’s socialist president Nicolás Maduro dispatched judges. The motivation, in part, is money. The result, however, is the same: a coup. Opposition leaders branded Mr Maduro “a dictator” and foreign governments decried the power grab after Venezuela’s government-controlled Supreme Court effectively annulled the National Assembly on Thursday, where the opposition won a majority in 2015 amid […]
Taken together, the moves reinforce the message that Mr. Trump plans to make security cooperation the cornerstone of the American approach to the region, without human rights becoming an obstacle, unlike President George W. Bush, who also emphasized the development of democracy, or Mr. Obama, who pressed autocratic states to ease repression. Continue reading the main story “A blank check from President Trump on human rights concerns […]
RBC’s head of cross asset strategy Charlie McElligott dons his full wonksh equity analyst hat today, exposing “The April Effect,” and the specific risk of “nasty double whammy” of levered long-short unwinds should momentum stall. Quick note of warning as we transition into the new quarter, with potential for major thematic / sector / factor reversals in stocks. The following observation regarding April seeing a seasonal ‘momentum’ […]
In a low-income area of Ecuador’s capital, followers of Lenín Boltaire Moreno sang along at his final rally to a quintessential Latin American revolutionary song, composed in 1973 by Chile’s Quilapayún: “The people united will never be defeated”. “I am here to celebrate in advance the triumph of Lenín Moreno, because he is the continuation of a project that started 10 years ago,” said Mónica Ortíz, a […]
BEIRUT More than 7,000 people have escaped Islamic State control in the Tabqa area west of the Syrian city of Raqqa since last week, U.S.-backed local forces fighting the jihadists said on Friday. The Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab milita fighters, has been battling Islamic State around Tabqa, nearly 40 km (25 miles) west of Raqqa city. Last week, they captured the northern […]
ANKARA Turkey will not remain indifferent to security risks in Syria after the completion of its “Euphrates Shield” operation, President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said on Friday, days after Ankara said the operation had finished. Turkey launched the incursion into northern Syria more than six months ago to push Islamic State fighters away from its border and stop the advance of Kurdish fighters. At a news conference in […]
They don’t go in for pomp and ceremony at the US Federal Reserve. The retirement of Daniel Tarullo next Wednesday will be marked by coffee and doughnuts, according to a person familiar with the send-off. That’s a pity, in a way, as the departure of the 64-year-old member of the board of governors — and the world’s most fearsome bank regulator — marks a seminal moment on […]
LONDON Global food crises worsened significantly in 2016 and conditions look set to deteriorate further this year in some areas with an increasing risk of famine, a report said on Friday. “There is a high risk of famine in some areas of north-eastern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen because of armed conflict, drought and macro-economic collapse,” the Food Security Information Network (FSIN) said. FSIN, which is […]
With Adam Rawnsley Looking for a deal. Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has offered to be interviewed by the FBI and House and Senate investigators examining the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia, in exchange for immunity from prosecution, “but has so far found no takers,” according to the Wall Street Journal. In a statement on Thursday evening, Flynn’s lawyer Robert Kelner, […]
By Isabel Coles | HASSAN SHAM CAMP, Iraq HASSAN SHAM CAMP, Iraq United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Friday called on the international community to increase aid to help people fleeing the Iraqi city of Mosul which government forces have been battling to retake from Islamic State. Iraqi forces have seized back most of the country’s second-largest city from the Sunni hardline group in a massive […]
