Friday, March 25, 2016

Today's Headlines

Posted by Gary .....at 8:13 PM
Bloomberg:     
  • Brussels Suspect Shot in Terror Raid With Child Near Scene. Belgian special police forces shot a suspect in the Brussels terrorist blasts and coaxed a small girl away from the scene, on a frantic day of house raids amid fears of further attacks. The man shown with a leg wound on amateur videos was among nine people taken into custody late Thursday and Friday in a city on edge after the murder of 31 people on Tuesday. Prosecutors said DNA analysis confirmed that the second suicide bomber in the Brussels airport departure hall was Najim Laachraoui, who was also sought in connection with the Paris attacks in November. His DNA also was found on an explosive vest used at the Bataclan concert hall and on an explosive device at the Stade de France, prosecutors said. Anti-terror probes unfolded in Belgium and France as security officials warned that Islamic State is poised to strike again in European cities to revenge losses inflicted in its home territories in Syria and Iraq.
  • Shanghai Tightens Non-Local Homebuyer Rules as Prices Surge. Shanghai unveiled a package of measures designed to stem a surge in property prices in the metropolis, underscoring how regulators in top-tier cities are shifting gears in an economy where housing has been a brake on growth in recent years. The local government will tighten approval criteria for non-resident homebuyers, raise down-payment requirements for some second homes and ban unregulated lending, Gu Jinshan, chief of the city housing management commission, said at a press conference Friday. Shanghai, where new home prices soared 21 percent in February from a year earlier, becomes the first large city to tighten residence-buying requirements. It is taking advantage of greater freedom from the central government for local authorities to deal with divergent property markets across the country. In first-tier cities, stimulus intended to boost sluggish real-estate investment led to a home-buying frenzy. Finance-center Shanghai has seen “panic buying” and phony divorces that can double a couple’s buying power, Gu said. The local market has also been affected by a inflow of funds from other regions, and from the stock market, which plummeted in mid-2015.
  • Nomura Said to Plan Cutting About 20% of North America Staff. Nomura Holdings Inc. may dismiss about 20 percent of its workforce in North America, according to people with knowledge of the situation, joining a growing number of competitors shrinking Wall Street operations amid a trading slump. Decisions aren’t final, and the ultimate number could still differ, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations. One senior manager said reductions could be expanded to affect as much as 30 percent of the region’s staff. Japan’s biggest brokerage has about 2,500 employees in the Americas, most of whom work in the U.S. and Canada. 
  • Coal Suffering Bleak Year in China on Weakening Industrial Use. China’s coal use is forecast to fall a third year as industrial output slows, adding force to President Xi Jinping’s drive to cut overcapacity and dimming the hopes of global miners for an uptick in demand by the world’s biggest consumer. Demand will slide 2 percent this year and prices will remain at a low level, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency, citing Xu Liang, deputy secretary general of the China Coal Industry Association. Output by the world’s largest producer will also fall by 2 percent. Consumption has weakened amid a push to use cleaner fuels and shift a slowing economy away from heavy industry. Demand for coal, which accounted for 64 percent of the country’s total energy use last year, contracted 3.7 percent last year, following a 2.9 percent decline in 2014, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.“This year’s coal situation is equally bleak,” Xinhua quoted Xu as saying.
  • Commodity Rout Bleeds $8.6 Billion From Japan's Trading Houses. Japan’s biggest trading companies, stalwarts of the nation’s economy, expect to book combined writedowns of at least 970 billion yen ($8.6 billion) as ill-timed investments in commodities ranging from shale gas to copper mines erode profitability. The writedowns for the year ending March underscore the predicament Japan’s “sogo shosha,” or general trading houses, find themselves in after investing heavily in metals and energy at the height of the commodities boom, only to see prices tumble. The Bloomberg Commodity Index, a measure of returns from 22 raw materials, has dropped about 40 percent the last two years, and earlier this year touched the lowest level since 1991. “These writedowns are significant,” Tom O’Sullivan, founder of Mathyos, a Tokyo-based energy consultant. “They will review strategy and need to further diversify as margins in the intermediary businesses, which has been their traditional strength, are compressing.”
  • Behind U.S. GDP Data Is Reason for Recession Worry: Weak Profits. On the face of it, the latest government update on how the U.S. economy performed in the fourth quarter looked a bit more encouraging. Growth was revised to a 1.4 percent annualized pace from a previously estimated 1 percent, and the adjustment to gross domestic product was for a good reason -- consumer spending rose more than previously thought. Yet beyond the headline number, there is a reason for some concern. Corporate profits plunged 11.5 percent in the fourth quarter from the year-ago period, the biggest drop since a 31 percent collapse at the end of 2008 during the height of the financial crisis. For 2015 as a whole, pretax earnings fell 3.1 percent, the most in seven years, according to the Commerce Department. That’s “bad news,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts. History shows that when earnings fall, the economy often follows them downward into recession as profit-starved companies cut back on hiring and investment.
  • Ohio, Pa. Senate Races Move to ‘Toss Ups’: Cook Political Report. Decision to move Ohio, Pa. races from “lean Republican” is mainly due to overall political environment, Cook analyst Jennifer Duffy says on website. Says incumbent Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Pat Toomey of Pa. won their seats in a “very good” Republican year in 2010; now they face re-election in a presidential year in states that President Barack Obama carried in 2008 and 2012. Says both could be hurt if Donald Trump wins GOP presidential nomination. “If Trump proves to be a serious drag on the ticket, there isn’t much that either incumbent can do to rescue their re-election bids".
  • Hedge Funds Pumped Up Silicon Valley. Now They're Pulling Out. In recent months, venture capital firms and mutual funds have become choosier about which technology startups they’re prepared to back. Now hedge funds, after helping push valuations to dot-com-era heights, are getting more picky, too. Last month, hedge funds participated in the fewest number of venture capital rounds in U.S. tech companies since 2013, inking just two deals, according to research firm PitchBook Data Inc. Even Tiger Global Management LLC, an early backer of Facebook and LinkedIn with $20 billion under management, has pulled back. Smaller firms are getting out altogether. Like VCs, hedge funds are more circumspect because some startups have failed to live up to their billing. Plus, in the wake of several disappointing tech IPOs, many of the most promising firms are choosing to stay private longer, meaning it takes longer to cash out. Investors’ stinginess is forcing startups to cut costs, fire workers and accept more stringent terms when raising money.
  • Gilead(GILD) Must Pay Merck $200 Million for Hepatitis C Patents. Gilead Sciences Inc. was ordered by a jury to pay Merck & Co. $200 million for patent infringement over a drug compound that cures hepatitis C, a tenth of what Merck sought. The verdict announced Thursday follows an earlier finding by the jury embracing Merck’s claims that its scientists were responsible for early breakthroughs that led to the development of the Sovaldi and Harvoni medicines which helped Gilead become the world’s largest biotechnology firm by market value. After siding with Merck on all the patent claims, jurors rejected Merck’s bid for a 10 percent royalty on the $20.7 billion revenue that Gilead’s hepatitis C drugs generated from 2013 through 2015. 
  • Microsoft(MSFT) Apologizes After Twitter Chat Bot Experiment Goes Awry. Microsoft Corp. apologized after Twitter users exploited its artificial-intelligence chat bot Tay, teaching it to spew racist, sexist and offensive remarks in what the company called a “coordinated attack” that took advantage of a “critical oversight.” “We are deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets from Tay, which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay,” Peter Lee, corporate vice president at Microsoft Research, said in a blog post Friday.
Wall Street Journal: 
Fox News:
  • US announces ISIS paymaster killed as France, Belgium dismantle terror cell. (video) The West struck back hard against ISIS in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks, with the U.S. announcing it took out the Islamist group’s paymaster in a raid in Syria even as authorities in Belgium and France continued to roll up the cell behind this week’s carnage as well as the deadly November attacks in Paris.
  • Chelsea Clinton laments 'crushing' health care costs despite ObamaCare. Chelsea Clinton, in an implicit swipe at the impact of President Obama's health care law, recently told voters that many Americans still are facing "crushing costs" from health insurance even under the Affordable Care Act.  The comments were captured in a video posted this week. In her remarks, Clinton said her mother -- presidential candidate Hillary Clinton -- could use executive action to curb those costs.
CNBC: 
Zero Hedge:
Financial News:
  • China Banks' Bad Loans May Continue to Rise. Chinese banks face challenges of slowing profit growth, intensified industry competition and interest rate liberalization, citing China Construction Bank Chairman Wang Hongzhang as saying.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)