By Nichola Saminather and Wayne Cole | SINGAPORE/SYDNEY SINGAPORE/SYDNEY The euro was under the gun on Monday, skidding to a 20-month low after Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he would resign following a stinging defeat on constitutional reform that could destabilise the country’s shaky banking system. The single currency, which slumped to as low as $1.0505 EUR= in early Asian trade after opening at around $1.0685, […]
On April 7, 14 large blue letters quietly disappeared from the outer walls of an office building in an exclusive neighborhood in northern San Salvador. One by one, the letters came down from the blue and beige stucco walls, leaving behind faint traces of the name of the law firm that had been working there just days before: M-O-S-S-A-C-K-F-O-N-S-E-C-A. Employees of the El Salvador branch of Mossack […]
In June, speaking at a former steelworks in western Pennsylvania that now processes scrap aluminium, Donald Trump promised a bright future for US steel if he became president. “It will be American steel that will fortify American’s crumbling bridges. It will be American steel that sends our skyscrapers soaring into the sky,” he said. “We are going to put American-produced steel back into the backbone of our […]
FRANKFURT German semiconductor equipment maker Aixtron will explore with its Chinese suitor what can be salvaged of the planned takeover after a U.S. presidential order ruled the deal posed a national security risk, the company said on Saturday. U.S. President Barack Obama blocked China’s Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund (FGC) from acquiring Aixtron’s U.S. business, the Treasury Department said on Friday. “The bidder and Aixtron are evaluating […]
US technology shares faced one of their worst weeks of 2016 as investors shifted their focus to equities that will benefit from the soaring price of oil and the policies of the Trump administration. The S&P 500 technology index, a measure of large companies in the sector, has declined 3 per cent since Friday last week. The fall represents the steepest drop since late April, when Apple […]
All of a sudden, it’s executive pay time. Here is The Purposeful Company, the product of a steering group of seven grandees, a task force of nine more, plus a dozen contributors, together demonstrating that those getting today’s executive pay have nothing useful to say on the subject, as Neil Austin forcefully pointed out on our letters page this week. This followed an earlier suggestion that incoming […]
Photo Residents whose home was destroyed by a fire in the Jewish settlement of Halamish in the West Bank. Credit Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images NATAF, Israel — When Rama’s Kitchen, an earthy and much-loved restaurant in the small Israeli village of Nataf, was burned last week by one of the wildfires that raged in the area, the last civilians who stayed to fight the blaze […]
Mic founder Jake Horowitz reported Friday afternoon that President Obama has been “discussing a post-presidential career in digital media.” The White House swiftly denied it, but that didn’t stop journalists from cracking wise about the possibility: *March, 2017*“Barack Obama, CNN digital contributor,” the chyron reads. — Byron Tau (@ByronTau) December 2, 2016 is obama coming for my job or not https://t.co/PcEGRgFH7g — Sami Main (@samimain) December 2, […]
This week was full of Big Data news, including new releases, a brand new product, a new acquisition and an update to one of the major Hadoop distros. Let’s get a survey of what was announced and then see if we can’t draw a conclusion or two. A big driver for much of the news was this week’s Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference, providing an opportunity for […]
At a conference on investing in non-performing loans in Milan last week, attendees were asked to vote on whether an Italian government scheme to help sell the debt was the “best way forward”. Just 3 per cent agreed. The response follows a year of wrangling over proposals to tackle the €360bn of problematic loans plaguing the balance sheets of Italian banks, which have lost half their stock […]
Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz’s decision to step down is unlikely to hamper growth at the world’s biggest coffee chain as his successor Kevin Johnson is well suited to take the helm, analysts said. Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) said on Thursday that Schultz would step down as CEO on April 3 to focus on new high-end coffee shops, handing the top job to Chief Operating Officer Johnson, a […]
When Dala Farouki Kakos was a child, her parents invested in three Syrian chests, with matching mirrors, in the traditional sadaf style – on the understanding that they would be passed on to Kakos and her two siblings once they were grown up and had homes of their own. Beautifully embellished with mother of pearl, Kakos’s set has accompanied her on her travels around the world, and […]
India has emerged as one of the most prominent victims of November’s market turmoil. The twin shocks on Nov. 8 of Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s currency crackdown have unleashed a wave of selling in stock and foreign-exchange markets. It is the latest reversal for Western investors banking on an economic revival in the world’s second-most populous nation. Mr. Modi has […]
By Matthias Inverardi and Harro Ten Wolde | FRANKFURT FRANKFURT Aixtron (AIXGn.DE) will have to take action to balance income and costs, including potential job cuts, if U.S. President Barack Obama blocks its takeover by China’s Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund (FGC). Shares in the German semiconductor equipment maker fell more than 5 percent on Friday following a report by Bloomberg, citing sources, that said Obama was […]
By Gavin Jones | ROME ROME With his political career on the line, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi launched a final day of campaigning on Friday ahead of a Dec. 4 referendum, saying Italy would be the strongest nation in Europe if he wins. Financial markets and Europe’s politicians fear victory for the opposition ‘No’ camp could trigger political instability and renewed turmoil for Italy’s battered banks, pushing […]
Coutts, the taxpayer-owned bank, provided offshore services to controversial clients including a member of the Brunei royal family accused of stealing billions from his own country, and a banker charged with assisting the sons of Egypt’s deposed president, Hosni Mubarak, in financial crime. Known as the Queen’s bank after its most famous customer, Coutts is revealed to have managed secretive tax haven structures for the Sultan of […]
Friday 06:00 GMT Overview Stock markets across Asia, oil and the dollar have all gone into reverse on Friday, while government bonds were mixed ahead of the release later today of closely-watched US jobs data. European bourses are expected to open lower with spreadbetters predicting the UK’s FTSE 100 will slip 40 points to 6,712 and Germany’s Dax to drop 55 points to 10,479. US index futures […]
US technology shares are on track to log their worst week in seven months as investors shifted their focus to equities that will benefit from the soaring price of oil and the policies of the Trump administration. The S&P 500 technology index, a measure of large companies in the sector, has declined by 3.3 per cent since last Friday. The fall would represent the steepest drop since […]
Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has broken out the number of FttN premises ready for service, providing a temporary level of increased transparency into the NBN rollout numbers that usually lump fibre to the node (FttN), fibre to the basement (FttB), and fibre to the premise (FttP) technologies into a single total. With the number of ready for service FttN premises overtaking the number of brownfields FttP premises […]
Workday reported solid third quarter financial results Thursday after the bell. The Software-as-a-Service provider reported a net loss of $110 million, or 57 cents per share. Non-GAAP earnings were three cents per share on revenue of $409.6 million, up 34.2 percent annually. Wall Street was expecting a loss of four cents per share on a revenue of $400 million. “We had a strong third quarter and saw […]
NEW YORK A sharp decline in technology stocks pulled both the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 indexes into the red on Thursday, while gains in bank and energy shares helped push the Dow to a record high close. Based on the latest available data, the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was up 68.49 points, or 0.36 percent, to 19,192.07, the S&P 500 .SPX had lost 7.72 points, […]
Egypt’s largest listed lender CIB sold a near-72 percent stake in its investment banking arm CI Capital to Egyptian and Gulf investors on Thursday, as part of a move to shed subsidiaries and focus on core actives. Commercial International Bank’s announcement of the deal came a day after it confirmed it was in talks to sell a majority stake in CI Capital, which banking sources say is […]
By Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen | COPENHAGEN COPENHAGEN Maersk Line, the world’s biggest shipping company, is to buy smaller rival Hamburg Süd, joining a wave of M&A in the industry just over two months after the Danish company revealed plans to bolster its transport operations. The deal, announced by parent A.P. Moller-Maersk (MAERSKb.CO) on Thursday, is the group’s first full takeover in more than a decade and highlights a […]
Saudi Arabia is boosting the firepower of its sovereign wealth fund to accelerate deal-making and lessen the country’s dependence on oil. The Public Investment Fund is receiving a 100 billion-riyal ($27 billion) transfer from official reserves, according to a statement Wednesday on the SPA official news agency, increasing its existing assets by about 17 percent. The injection will help the fund diversify investments and revenues, it said. The […]
