One-off costs and multibillion-dollar writedowns have dragged down HSBC’s full-year profit 62 per cent year-on-year to $7.1bn, as the London-headquartered lender extended its share buyback programme by an additional $1bn. The British bank blamed slowing economic growth in its main markets of Hong Kong and the UK for the profit slide, as well as a $3.2bn impairment of goodwill to its private banking unit in Europe, and […]
Success for banks selling large blocks of stock in the European market this year points to a supportive environment for new listings in the months ahead, bankers say. There have been 70 such accelerated offerings so far this year according to Dealogic, worth €11.3bn, more than double the €5.5bn sold in the same period a year ago when anxiety about the state of China’s economy prompted much […]
Kacific Broadband Satellites has announced that it will provide a 100Mbps satellite broadband service to under-served areas across more than 20 countries in South East Asia and the Pacific through a 702 Boeing satellite. The Kacific-1 satellite, being built by Boeing, will provide broadband via the projection of 57 Ka-band narrow beams targeted at geographically remote locations throughout those 20 countries, with the service to launch in […]
State-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) said on Sunday it had signed an agreement giving China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) an eight percent stake in a 40-year onshore oil concession. “CNPC contributed a sign up bonus of 6.5 billion dirhams ($1.8 billion) to enter the concession,” ADNOC said in a statement. The onshore concession is operated by the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Petroleum Operations (ADCO). […]
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has reiterated that parts of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal are still worth salvaging despite the United States’ withdrawal last month, with Australia to continue pushing for a revised deal during a meeting in March with the remaining TPP members in Chile. “While Australia is disappointed by the decision of the United States to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we are […]
Good news, JRPG fans! The latest installment for the popular Ys series is coming to the United States. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana is coming stateside on fall 2017. If you want your JRPG fix but Final Fantasy VII Remake feels like eons away, then Ys VIII can give you relief. NIS America will bring this long-running JRPG franchise, which has its own respectable fanbase. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana is the eighth […]
With US stocks in record territory and the S&P 500 index the most richly valued in more than a decade, some investors see dark clouds gathering on the horizon. The S&P 500, a broad measure of the stock prices of America’s largest companies, ended last week at a record high and has risen almost 10 per cent since the election of Donald Trump as president in November. […]
The most successful artificial intelligence (AI) systems will be those comprising an emotional intelligence almost indistinguishable from human-to-human interaction, according to Bronwyn van der Merwe, group director at Fjord Australia and New Zealand — Accenture Interactive’s design and innovation arm. While the concept of AI is not new, in 2017 van der Merwe expects emotional intelligence to emerge as the driving force behind what she called the […]
Trump Is Playing You Note: Soren K is a group of 4 writers to whom I contribute on commodity market posts-Vince Lanci Written by Soren K and MarketSlant. There is one thing Hillary and Donald agree on. You are idiots. She said it. He thinks it. In fact the voting populace is largely brain damaged. And those who aren’t quite vegetables yet will become pacified with iphones, slot machines, […]
By Lauren Hirsch and Greg Roumeliotis Restaurant Brands International Inc, owner of the Burger King and Tim Hortons fast-food chains, is nearing a deal to acquire Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen Inc, people familiar with the matter said on Monday. The deal, which will likely value Popeyes at more than $1.7 billion, is a bet by Oakville, Ontario-based Restaurant Brands that it can use its international reach to introduce […]
The UAE awarded 4.5 billion dirhams ($1.2 billion) in military procurement deals on Sunday, part of a total of 20 billion dirhams worth of purchases it expects to make at an arms fair this week, a spokesman for the expo said. The deals awarded to local and international companies on Sunday included a 2 billion dirham award to the UAE’s NIMR Automotive, part of Tawazun Holdings, for […]
Pre-results jitters put Pearson among Monday’s sharpest fallers. Ahead of its full-year figures due Friday, Pearson faded 3.9 per cent to 642.5p. Since a profit warning in late January, the textbook publisher had rallied as much as 17 per cent amid hopes of another round of cost-cutting. But Pearson has already spent £610m on restructuring since 2013, to net cumulative savings of just £586m even before reinvestment, […]
The Brazilian government is taking the first steps towards the development of a national information security policy for the public sector. According to an official note published by the Institutional Security Cabinet of the federal government on Friday (17), a working group has been created to debate the topic and the creation of standard security guidelines for governmental bodies. special feature Cyberwar and the Future of Cybersecurity […]
By Erik Kirschbaum | BERLIN BERLIN The German government has drafted a law to allow authorities to tap into the phone and computer data of asylum-seekers if there are doubts about their nationalities – an unusual move in a country where data protection is sacred. According to a draft of the bill obtained by Reuters, officials at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) will receive […]
Microsoft may have decided to nix its HoloLens 2 headset which was expected to debut in early 2017 and decided to go straight to version 3 in 2019. The decision to skip version 2 and go straight to 3 is according to a report on February 19 from Brad Sams on Thurrott.com. Sams cites multiple anonymous sources as saying Microsoft’s next HoloLens release is two years away. […]
The quaint cobblestone streets of the historic Gastown district of Vancouver belie its status as a fast-growing technology hub. Drawing on links with nearby Seattle, and San Francisco further south, a tech boom in Canada’s third-largest city has pulled in tens of thousands of skilled workers and start-up entrepreneurs in recent years, sparking a fierce fight for the limited supply of office space. Now the commercial centre […]
Photo Russian soldiers patrolling in Aleppo, Syria, this month. A bomb last week brought the number of Russian combat deaths in Syria to 27. Credit Omar Sanadiki/Reuters MOSCOW — Four Russian servicemen were killed and two were wounded in Syria last week when their car was blown up by a remote-controlled bomb, the Russian news agency Interfax reported on Monday, citing a statement by the Defense Ministry […]
As the world’s oil traders descend on London this week, the hot subject will be how to keep North Sea Brent, the benchmark for the global oil price, fit for purpose. S&P Global Platts , the oil pricing agency, is trying to execute the biggest overhaul of North Sea oil trading in a decade, with plans to rejig how prices in the region are set ahead of […]
Some of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds are increasingly striking their own private equity deals rather than relying on external fund managers, in a drive to cut costs and gain more control. With some $6.5 trillion in assets, sovereign investors already account for 19 percent of capital committed to private equity, according to data from research firm Preqin. But mega-funds such as the Abu Dhabi Investment […]
So what can schools near roads do about their air quality? Closing a school’s doors and windows won’t keep traffic pollutants out (though that helps). Heavy-duty air filters — higher quality than the typical filters in schools — can substantially reduce what gets into the air the kids and teachers are breathing inside. Filters rated MERV 16, characterized as surgery-grade, have been installed in dozens of Southern […]
Salesforce added risk segmenting tools, patient targeting and lead conversion data to its Health Cloud, an effort expand the company’s footprint in an industry that accounts for 17.8 percent of U.S. Gross Domestic product. That statistic, via the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, highlights how Salesforce is going after large verticals. Typically, the company’s offerings have been more horizontal with its Service Cloud, CRM and analytics […]
Finding out that the fiver in your wallet is worth thousands of pounds is a dream-come-true for some — but not everyone. A Northern Irish woman who discovered a rare £5 note worth £50,000 ($62,317) has given the note to charity because she says she has no use for the money. The note is one of just four ultra-rare notes worth £50,000 in circulation in the UK. […]
For President Trump, the designation debate is an election promise made good. He has made no bones about taking an approach to the Middle East that is narrowly focused on counterterrorism, and that plays to domestic supporters who view all Islamist movements — or even all Muslims — as potentially hostile. Continue reading the main story In much of the Middle East, though, the rapid pace and […]
Here we go again. The premium investors are demanding to hold French over German 10-year debt has hit a fresh post-eurozone crisis high today – exceeding 0.81 percentage points for the first time since August 2012. The yield gap has swollen to its highest in over four years this month, reflecting investor jitters about France’s upcoming and unpredictable presidential elections in three months’ time. France’s 10-year bond […]
