Finance news

• ChemChina to buy Italian tire maker Pirelli in $7.7 billion deal

  22-03-2015 23:02 via news.yahoo.com
  
  China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) agreed on Sunday to buy tire maker Pirelli in a 7.1 billion euro ($7.7 billion) deal that will place one of the symbols of Italy's manufacturing industry in Chinese hands. The deal with Pirelli's shareholders is the latest in a string of takeovers in Italy by cash-rich Chinese buyers, who can take advantage of a weak euro just as signs emerge that Europe is coming out of economic stagnation. It will give ChemChina access to technology to
  
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• RPT-INSIGHT-Abe-Kuroda honeymoon soured by fiscal friction

  22-03-2015 22:00
  (Repeats Sunday story with no changes) * Cracks appearing between Abe and Kuroda over fiscal target * Kuroda feels Japan shouldn't delay tax hikes, spending cuts * Abe open to goals affording more...
  
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• Spain says funds for Greece only after reforms

  22-03-2015 21:46 via news.yahoo.com
  
  Greece will not receive money from the eurozone rescue fund until it implements all of its proposed reforms, the Spanish economy minister told the Financial Times on Sunday. "We will see whether the list of reforms is comprehensive enough or not. This contradicts a statement by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that funds would begin to be disbursed to his cash-strapped government as soon as a new list of reforms is presented to Greece's creditors. This is not the first time that De
  
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• Lee Kuan Yew's legacy seen in vibrant, controlled Singapore

  22-03-2015 21:43 via news.yahoo.com
  
  Lee Kuan Yew, a towering figure in post-colonial Asia, oversaw tiny Singapore's transformation from British tropical outpost to an affluent, global city in just over a generation, setting the example for developing economies from China to Dubai. He retained English as Singapore's working language as a means of keeping the peace between the island's Chinese majority and Malay and Indian minorities and focused very early on in making "clean and green" Singapore, which turn
  
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• Spain says no cash for Greece until reforms implemented: FT

  22-03-2015 21:07 via news.yahoo.com
  
  The euro zone will not make any cash payment to Greece until it has passed and implemented all the reforms Athens agreed on in February, Spain's Economy Minister Luis de Guindos told the Financial Times on Sunday. "We will see whether the list of reforms is comprehensive enough or not.
  
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• New York regulator Lawsky aims at Deutsche Bank over Libor - FT

  22-03-2015 20:52
  NEW YORK, March 22 (Reuters) - Benjamin Lawsky, New York state's financial services regulator, has added himself to the regulators investigating Deutsche Bank AG for manipulation of the Libor...
  
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• Spain's Socialists wins Andalusia vote, Podemos makes strong headway: poll

  22-03-2015 20:29 via news.yahoo.com
  
  Spain's Socialists are set to win regional elections in Andalusia, with the People's Party, in power nationally, coming second and upstart Podemos making a strong headway, an exit poll by a regional public television channel showed on Sunday. The vote is the first test of new parties and a forerunner to a national election later this year, and comes against a backdrop of economic recovery which has done little to whittle down unemployment affecting one in four in Spain as a whole and one in thre
  
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• Greek leader to face scepticism, criticism on first Berlin visit

  22-03-2015 19:59 via news.yahoo.com
  
  By Stephen Brown BERLIN (Reuters) - Angela Merkel and Alexis Tsipras have sought to play down the drama of the Greek leader's first official visit to Berlin on Monday, but open scepticism among the Chancellor's allies has spawned media portrayals of a western-style showdown. "When the Greek outlaw Alexis Tsipras meets Angela Merkel - seen as all-powerful in many countries - all of Europe will be watching spellbound," wrote Welt am Sonntag. Although Merkel acknowledged last we
  
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• Ivory Coast ruling party picks Ouattara as candidate for October poll

  22-03-2015 19:52 via news.yahoo.com
  
  Ivory Coast's ruling party on Sunday chose incumbent president Alassane Ouattara as expected to be its candidate for this year's presidential election. The world's top cocoa producer and West Africa's economic powerhouse will go to the polls in October in an election Ouattara is tipped to win. Some 20,000 members of the Rally of the Republicans (RDR) who packed the Treichville sports complex in downtown Abidjan were asked by the party's interim Secretary-General to raise
  
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• UPDATE 1-Houthi chief vows to fight militants, sees Libya-style strife

  22-03-2015 19:38
  DUBAI, March 22 (Reuters) - The leader of Yemen's powerful Houthi movement vowed on Sunday to pursue Islamist militants behind suicide attacks anywhere and said the country was in danger of...
  
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• Houthi leader says Yemen faces Libya-style strife

  22-03-2015 18:47
  DUBAI, March 22 (Reuters) - The leader of Yemen's powerful Houthi movement vowed on Sunday to pursue Islamist militants behind suicide attacks anywhere and said the country was in danger of...
  
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• Fear behind current stock market highs: Nobel laureate

  22-03-2015 18:34 via news.yahoo.com
  
  Fear rather than euphoria is currently driving global stock markets to new highs, Nobel Economics laureate Robert Shiller said in a German newspaper interview on Sunday. The Yale University professor also warned of potential stock market bubbles and suggested it could be a good time to invest in oil, given the current record low prices. "The stock market boom we're currently experiencing isn't driven by euphoria," Shiller told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. Europ
  
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• U.S. court authorizes Citigroup to process Argentine bond payments

  22-03-2015 17:41
  BUENOS AIRES, March 22 (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc has been authorized by a U.S. judge to process two Argentine debt payments, the bank said, which could ease tensions between the bank and the...
  
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• Spain's fractured political landscape in focus as Andalusia votes

  22-03-2015 16:44 via news.yahoo.com
  
  By Inmaculada Sanz SEVILLE, Spain (Reuters) - Spain's two new political newcomers are facing their first real test in Sunday's election in Andalusia as they challenge the established parties following a profound economic and political crisis. The vote is a forerunner to a national election later this year and comes against a backdrop of economic recovery which has done little to whittle down unemployment. In Spain's most populous and largely agricultural region, about 6.5 million Andalusians, on
  
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• Sri Lanka's Sirisena forms national govt with opposition

  22-03-2015 16:09
  COLOMBO, March 22 (Reuters) - Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena formed a national government that included the opposition Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) on Sunday in a bid to push through...
  
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• U.S. developer buys home of Paris nightclub Le Queen: FT

  22-03-2015 15:47
  PARIS (Reuters) - New York-based property developer Thor Equities has bought the building that houses one of French nightlife's best-known clubs, Le Queen, formerly Le Central, on the Champs-Elysees...
  
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• BAIC Motor to take stake in Daimler China leasing firm

  22-03-2015 14:00
  BERLIN (Reuters) - Chinese automaker BAIC Motor Corp Ltd plans to deepen its partnership with Daimler AG by taking a 35 percent stake in the German firm's Mercedes-Benz Leasing Co, they said in a...
  
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• How Europe and U.S. stumbled into spat over China-led bank

  22-03-2015 13:53 via news.yahoo.com
  
  Historians may record March 2015 as the moment when China's chequebook diplomacy came of age, giving the world's number two economy a greater role in shaping global economic governance at the expense of the United States and the international financial institutions it has dominated since World War Two. This month European governments chose, in an ill-coordinated scramble for advantage, to join a nascent, Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in defiance of Washington&
  
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• India's Modi faces opposition from farmers to land reforms

  22-03-2015 13:29 via news.yahoo.com
  
  By Rajesh Kumar Singh NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought on Sunday to stave off farmer protests against his efforts to make it easier for businesses to buy land, after opposition to the bill overshadowed a burst of progress on economic reform. Tussles over land acquisition have locked up hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure developments, and looser rules are important for Modi's vision of building modern cities and industrial corridors crisscrossin
  
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• U.S. multinationals set to face much more pain from strong dollar

  22-03-2015 13:21 via news.yahoo.com
  
  The surging value of the U.S. dollar may be posing the biggest threat to U.S. corporate earnings since the 2008 financial crisis, hurting results at most U.S.-based multinationals. Some on Wall Street are even talking about an earnings recession. The dollar’s gain of 22 percent in the past 12 months against a basket of major currencies has landed a double whammy on U.S. companies with big sales abroad. The brokerage says that a 25 percent gain in the U.S. dollar in a 12-month period has histor
  
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• Analysis - U.S. multinationals set to face much more pain from strong dollar

  22-03-2015 13:21 via news.yahoo.com
  
  By Sinead Carew NEW YORK (Reuters) - The surging value of the U.S. dollar may be posing the biggest threat to U.S. corporate earnings since the 2008 financial crisis, hurting results at most U.S.-based multinationals. Some on Wall Street are even talking about an earnings recession.     The dollar’s gain of 22 percent in the past 12 months against a basket of major currencies has landed a double whammy on U.S. companies with big sales abroad. The brokerage says that a 25 percent gain in the
  
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• INSIGHT-Sovereign issuers seek to thwart Argentina-style attacks by funds

  22-03-2015 13:00
  NEW YORK, March 22 (Reuters) - Government bond issuers are adopting new standards intended to thwart a strategy that's plagued Argentina for 13 years, in which buyers snap up distressed debt for...
  
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• West should consider all tools, including arms, for Ukraine: NATO general

  22-03-2015 12:07 via news.yahoo.com
  
  The West should consider using all its tools to help Ukraine, including sending defensive weapons, NATO's top military commander said on Sunday. "I do not think that any tool of U.S. or any other nation's power should necessarily be off the table," U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove told a Brussels conference when asked if he was in favor of sending defensive weapons to Ukraine. Without naming Russia, Breedlove said that diplomatic, information, military and economic tac
  
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• MIDEAST STOCKS-Saudi Arabia edges up despite Savola, Egypt slips

  22-03-2015 09:59 via news.yahoo.com
  
  (Updates with Saudi Arabia, Egypt open) DUBAI, March 22 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's stock market edged up in early trade on Sunday after oil extended its rebound, while Egypt's bourse fell. The main Saudi index added 0.2 percent as investors focused on property stocks. Mecca developer Jabal Omar , up 1.1 percent, was the main support and Emaar Economic City jumped 4.1 percent. Petrochemicals giant Saudi Basic Industries edged up 0.2 percent after European and U.S. oil benchmarks posted weekly gai
  
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• U.S. inflation, Greek tensions in focus

  22-03-2015 09:27 via news.yahoo.com
  
  By Gavin Jones ROME (Reuters) - Markets still digesting an unexpectedly cautious message from the Federal Reserve will get more food for thought this week with U.S. inflation data and potentially rising risks of a Greek exit from the euro zone. The euro hit a 12-year low below $1.05 against the dollar at the start of last week only to jump back to $1.10 on Wednesday - its biggest one-day rise in six years - after the Fed signaled it was in no hurry to raise rates after all. Bank of Japan Governo
  
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• IMF welcomes Beijing's efforts to boost regional investment

  22-03-2015 09:22 via news.yahoo.com
  
  BEIJING (AP) — International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde said Sunday that China's economic slowdown is legitimate and that Beijing can contribute to global prosperity.
  
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• Saudi Arabia's OPEC governor: hard to reach $100-120 oil again

  22-03-2015 08:44 via news.yahoo.com
  
  Saudi Arabia's OPEC governor Mohammed al-Madi said on Sunday that he believed it would be difficult for oil to reach a price range of $100-120 per barrel again. He also repeated that Saudi Arabia had no political motives in its oil policy. "There isn't any political dimension in what we do at the oil ministry - our vision is commercial and economic...We didn't mean to hurt anybody, our vision is simply the following: the producers which have low costs have to have the priorit
  
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• 'Economic emergence': the potential of fair African development

  22-03-2015 07:37 via news.yahoo.com
  
  Across Africa, where many nations show high economic growth rates but with little benefit to their populations, the notion of social and economic "emergence" is taking hold as a remedy for perennial pessimism. Ivory Coast's President Alassane Ouattara, who hosted a regional conference on the theme this week, has grabbed on to the promise of economic emergence as he plans to seek re-election in October. "For me, the goal of emergence is not GDP (gross domestic product) growth
  
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• Weaker euro works in ECB's favour, but for how long?

  22-03-2015 06:58 via news.yahoo.com
  
  The weaker euro, which could approach parity with the US dollar, is making the European Central Bank's task of kickstarting the eurozone economy easier. Officially, the ECB has no exchange rate target. "In the current context, pushing down the euro is probably the only means the ECB has for pushing up inflation," Natixis economist Sylvain Broyer told AFP. The ECB has rolled out a series of unprecedented measures in recent years to try to prevent the euro area from slipping into de
  
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• Currency hedging takes on new importance for global stock funds

  22-03-2015 06:15
  
  NEW YORK (Reuters) - As the dollar surged in the last 12 months, David Marcus, head of the Evermore Global Value fund, steadily increased his stake in Europe. He now has 60 percent of his portfolio...
  
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• Left-wing Greek PM to visit austerity champion Merkel

  22-03-2015 06:00 via news.yahoo.com
  
  The leaders of debt-wracked Greece and economic powerhouse Germany meet in Berlin Monday after weeks of bad blood over Athens' debt woes, bitter wartime memories and an offensive hand gesture. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will receive Greece's radical left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who has blamed her insistence on tough austerity for his country's "humanitarian crisis" of poverty and mass unemployment. Merkel, for her part, maintains that if cash-strapped Gr
  
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• China sees bright spots in slowing economy, vice premier says

  22-03-2015 04:53 via news.yahoo.com
  
  By Kevin Yao BEIJING (Reuters) - China's economy faces increased downward pressure this year but the slowdown is stabilizing, with employment and services among the bright spots, Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli said on Sunday. Weighed down by a property downturn, factory overcapacity and local debt, China's economic growth is expected to slow to a quarter-century low of around 7 percent this year from 7.4 percent in 2014, despite expected additional stimulus measures. "The downward press
  
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• China to keep economic growth in reasonable range: vice premier

  22-03-2015 03:43 via news.yahoo.com
  
  By Kevin Yao BEIJING (Reuters) - China's economy faces increased downward pressure this year, Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli said on Sunday, while reiterating that economic growth must be kept within a reasonable range. Beijing has set a target for growth of around 7 percent for 2015. "The downward pressure on China's economy increased somewhat since the start of this year," Zhang told a high-level conference in Beijing.
  
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• INSIGHT-Abe-Kuroda honeymoon soured by fiscal friction

  22-03-2015 02:00
  * Cracks appearing between Abe and Kuroda over fiscal target * Kuroda feels Japan shouldn't delay tax hikes, spending cuts * Abe open to goals affording more spending flexibility -sources * Rift...
  
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