- Twenty-four billionaires have spent $88 million on the 2016 US presidential election, with most money going to support Hillary Clinton. The top donor has been hedge fund manager Donald Sussman who donated $19 million to Clinton's campaign.
- AT&T and Verizon have taken divergent strategies to address saturated wireless markets, with AT&T acquiring Time Warner for $80 billion to focus on television while Verizon has invested in digital companies like AOL and Yahoo.
- More investors are advocating for increased fiscal stimulus and government spending as a way to boost sluggish economic growth, as monetary policies from central banks seem to be losing effectiveness. This shift could have significant effects on financial markets.
Every year the smart people at Contagious publish their most significant moments and trends in branding, advertising and tech innovation.
As ever, 2016 is a must read.
Make sure you visit http://www.contagious.com/ for more.
First in a two-part Blog on the Rare Earths (RE) sector, a Black Swan event and the impact of a United States (US) potential new Republican Administration.
Please find attached our annual review with our compliments. This is a sample of the high quality content our subscribers receive each week. Take your free trial at bloombergbriefs.com
Every year the smart people at Contagious publish their most significant moments and trends in branding, advertising and tech innovation.
As ever, 2016 is a must read.
Make sure you visit http://www.contagious.com/ for more.
First in a two-part Blog on the Rare Earths (RE) sector, a Black Swan event and the impact of a United States (US) potential new Republican Administration.
Please find attached our annual review with our compliments. This is a sample of the high quality content our subscribers receive each week. Take your free trial at bloombergbriefs.com
Provided geopolitical movement doesn’t derail his best laid predictions, Gordon Orr sees a year of slowing economic growth, headaches for multinationals, demographic anxiety, and buyer’s remorse for soccer tycoons.
The Economist May 16th 2020 591The 2010s were not a ha.docxrhetttrevannion
The Economist May 16th 2020 59
1
The 2010s were not a happy decade for
proponents of global trade. Though
fears of an increase in protectionism fol-
lowing the financial crisis of 2007-09 did
not materialise, nor did the growth of the
1990s and 2000s re-establish itself. Fi-
nance was tamer; China was richer and de-
veloping its internal market; transport was
no longer getting cheaper. As a share of glo-
bal gdp, neither global trade, foreign direct
investment, nor stocks of cross-border
bank lending returned to their 2000s peak.
And then, belatedly, fears about protec-
tionism came good with the election of
President Donald Trump. In 2018 he
launched a trade war against China; he ap-
plied tariffs in the name of national securi-
ty; his administration hog-tied the World
Trade Organisation’s appellate court.
Optimists might have seen the 2020s
getting off to a slightly better start. The
“Phase One” deal between America and
China, signed on January 15th, left tariffs
six times higher than they had been before
Mr Trump launched his trade war.
The covid-19 pandemic has since, by
curtailing trade across the Pacific, made it
very hard to see how China can increase
its imports from America in line with the
Phase One deal’s requirements. But that is
the least of the trading world’s worries.
The United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development is predicting that
covid-19 will reduce flows of foreign direct
invest-ment by 30-40%; the World Bank
expects remittances to fall by 20%; the
wto reck-ons trade could fall by as much
as a third. Much of this carnage is because
of crashing demand, not new barriers to
trade. But the crisis has not made
international com-merce any easier.
Travel bans, quarantines and a wide-
spread desire to stay at home even among
those not ordered to do so means that the
movement of individuals from place to
place, the one aspect of globalisation that
had continued from strength to strength,
came to a juddering halt.
Fewer passengers means fewer planes
means less room for air freight. In a fore-
cast of covid-related costs made this April,
the wto took into account higher air-cargo
prices, extra time spent in transit for goods
having to go through more stringent border
checks, and travel restrictions making
trade in services and the delivery of equip-
ment that needs bespoke installation more
difficult. Overall, the wto thinks the rise in
costs could be equivalent to a 3.4% global
tariff. For comparison, in 2018 the global
average tariff was around 8%.
As firms have foundered, fears have
mounted that foreign state-supported
companies will swoop in and snap them
up. The European Commission has urged
member states to be “particularly vigilant”
in making sure businesses are not sold off.
The German, Italian and Spanish govern-
ments have all tightened their processes
for screening foreign investment. The Aus-
tralian government is requiring that all for-
eign investments be approved by the For-
eign .
The Economist May 16th 2020 591The 2010s were not a ha.docxlillie234567
The Economist May 16th 2020 59
1
The 2010s were not a happy decade for
proponents of global trade. Though
fears of an increase in protectionism fol-
lowing the financial crisis of 2007-09 did
not materialise, nor did the growth of the
1990s and 2000s re-establish itself. Fi-
nance was tamer; China was richer and de-
veloping its internal market; transport was
no longer getting cheaper. As a share of glo-
bal gdp, neither global trade, foreign direct
investment, nor stocks of cross-border
bank lending returned to their 2000s peak.
And then, belatedly, fears about protec-
tionism came good with the election of
President Donald Trump. In 2018 he
launched a trade war against China; he ap-
plied tariffs in the name of national securi-
ty; his administration hog-tied the World
Trade Organisation’s appellate court.
Optimists might have seen the 2020s
getting off to a slightly better start. The
“Phase One” deal between America and
China, signed on January 15th, left tariffs
six times higher than they had been before
Mr Trump launched his trade war.
The covid-19 pandemic has since, by
curtailing trade across the Pacific, made it
very hard to see how China can increase
its imports from America in line with the
Phase One deal’s requirements. But that is
the least of the trading world’s worries.
The United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development is predicting that
covid-19 will reduce flows of foreign direct
invest-ment by 30-40%; the World Bank
expects remittances to fall by 20%; the
wto reck-ons trade could fall by as much
as a third. Much of this carnage is because
of crashing demand, not new barriers to
trade. But the crisis has not made
international com-merce any easier.
Travel bans, quarantines and a wide-
spread desire to stay at home even among
those not ordered to do so means that the
movement of individuals from place to
place, the one aspect of globalisation that
had continued from strength to strength,
came to a juddering halt.
Fewer passengers means fewer planes
means less room for air freight. In a fore-
cast of covid-related costs made this April,
the wto took into account higher air-cargo
prices, extra time spent in transit for goods
having to go through more stringent border
checks, and travel restrictions making
trade in services and the delivery of equip-
ment that needs bespoke installation more
difficult. Overall, the wto thinks the rise in
costs could be equivalent to a 3.4% global
tariff. For comparison, in 2018 the global
average tariff was around 8%.
As firms have foundered, fears have
mounted that foreign state-supported
companies will swoop in and snap them
up. The European Commission has urged
member states to be “particularly vigilant”
in making sure businesses are not sold off.
The German, Italian and Spanish govern-
ments have all tightened their processes
for screening foreign investment. The Aus-
tralian government is requiring that all for-
eign investments be approved by the For-
eign .
Mergers & Acquistitions New Rules of AttractionNovember 15th .docxARIV4
Mergers & Acquistitions: New Rules of Attraction
November 15th 2014 From The Economist print edition
Weblink - http://www.economist.com/news/business/21632675-latest-boom-dealmaking-appears-more-sensible-its-predecessors-valuations-areThe latest boom in dealmaking appears more sensible than its predecessors. But valuations are creeping into the danger zone
RUCE WASSERSTEIN was probably the most famous mergers and acquisitions (M&A) banker on Wall Street in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet "Bid 'em up Bruce", who died in 2009, was ambivalent about his trade. The best rainmakers were capable men, he once wrote, but dealmaking also attracted "hustlers and swaggering mediocrities". And whereas takeovers made the business world more dynamic, they also led to "pain, dislocations and blunders".
Whether dealmaking is sensible is once more an important question, because M&A are back with a vengeance, after a lull following the financial crisis. Worldwide, $3.6 trillion of deals have been announced this year, reckons Bloomberg, an information provider, approaching the peak reached in 2007. In pharmaceuticals (see next story) and among media firms the activity is frantic. Deals worth more than $10 billion are again common. America and Britain, with their open markets for corporate control, account for a disproportionate share of the action. So do cross-border deals, which have risen from a sixth of activity in the mid-1990s to 43% today.
Long experience of booms and slumps in M&A has made investors wary. Veteran fund managers and academics argue that deals satisfy executives' vanity and enrich their bankers, but destroy value for shareholders. Reflecting this worry, when a firm announces an acquisition its shares have tended to fall, as investors fret that the premium it is paying will exceed the benefit from the synergies it will reap. However, since 2012 acquirers' share prices have generally been stable or have risen, according to McKinsey, a consulting firm. That begs an intriguing and dangerous question. Might this time be different?
On paper, M&A make sense. When two firms combine they can cut duplicated overheads, raising their margins. By adding together their market shares they can gain pricing power over customers and suppliers. By cross-selling each other's product ranges in each other's geographic markets, merging firms can make their combined sales a lot bigger than the sum of their individual ones.
M&A folklore, however, dwells on giant catastrophes, such as the combinations of Time Warner and AOL in 2000 just as the dotcom bubble burst, or Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and ABN AMRO in 2007, as the subprime crisis struck. Yet some of the world's most successful firms are the result of giant deals. Exxon became the energy industry's top dog thanks to its purchase in 1999 of Mobil, which had an under-appreciated collection of global assets. AB Inbev has done $100 billion of deals over two decades to become the world's biggest brewer, with thirst- ...
MTBiz is for you if you are looking for contemporary information on business, economy and especially on banking industry of Bangladesh. You would also find periodical information on Global Economy and Commodity Markets.
Signature content of MTBiz is its Article of the Month (AoM), as depicted on Cover Page of each issue, with featured focus on different issues that fall into the wide definition of Market, Business, Organization and Leadership. The AoM also covers areas on Innovation, Central Banking, Monetary Policy, National Budget, Economic Depression or Growth and Capital Market. Scale of coverage of the AoM both, global and local subject to each issue.
MTBiz is a monthly Market Review produced and distributed by Group R&D, MTB since 2009.
Provided geopolitical movement doesn’t derail his best laid predictions, Gordon Orr sees a year of slowing economic growth, headaches for multinationals, demographic anxiety, and buyer’s remorse for soccer tycoons.
The Economist May 16th 2020 591The 2010s were not a ha.docxrhetttrevannion
The Economist May 16th 2020 59
1
The 2010s were not a happy decade for
proponents of global trade. Though
fears of an increase in protectionism fol-
lowing the financial crisis of 2007-09 did
not materialise, nor did the growth of the
1990s and 2000s re-establish itself. Fi-
nance was tamer; China was richer and de-
veloping its internal market; transport was
no longer getting cheaper. As a share of glo-
bal gdp, neither global trade, foreign direct
investment, nor stocks of cross-border
bank lending returned to their 2000s peak.
And then, belatedly, fears about protec-
tionism came good with the election of
President Donald Trump. In 2018 he
launched a trade war against China; he ap-
plied tariffs in the name of national securi-
ty; his administration hog-tied the World
Trade Organisation’s appellate court.
Optimists might have seen the 2020s
getting off to a slightly better start. The
“Phase One” deal between America and
China, signed on January 15th, left tariffs
six times higher than they had been before
Mr Trump launched his trade war.
The covid-19 pandemic has since, by
curtailing trade across the Pacific, made it
very hard to see how China can increase
its imports from America in line with the
Phase One deal’s requirements. But that is
the least of the trading world’s worries.
The United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development is predicting that
covid-19 will reduce flows of foreign direct
invest-ment by 30-40%; the World Bank
expects remittances to fall by 20%; the
wto reck-ons trade could fall by as much
as a third. Much of this carnage is because
of crashing demand, not new barriers to
trade. But the crisis has not made
international com-merce any easier.
Travel bans, quarantines and a wide-
spread desire to stay at home even among
those not ordered to do so means that the
movement of individuals from place to
place, the one aspect of globalisation that
had continued from strength to strength,
came to a juddering halt.
Fewer passengers means fewer planes
means less room for air freight. In a fore-
cast of covid-related costs made this April,
the wto took into account higher air-cargo
prices, extra time spent in transit for goods
having to go through more stringent border
checks, and travel restrictions making
trade in services and the delivery of equip-
ment that needs bespoke installation more
difficult. Overall, the wto thinks the rise in
costs could be equivalent to a 3.4% global
tariff. For comparison, in 2018 the global
average tariff was around 8%.
As firms have foundered, fears have
mounted that foreign state-supported
companies will swoop in and snap them
up. The European Commission has urged
member states to be “particularly vigilant”
in making sure businesses are not sold off.
The German, Italian and Spanish govern-
ments have all tightened their processes
for screening foreign investment. The Aus-
tralian government is requiring that all for-
eign investments be approved by the For-
eign .
The Economist May 16th 2020 591The 2010s were not a ha.docxlillie234567
The Economist May 16th 2020 59
1
The 2010s were not a happy decade for
proponents of global trade. Though
fears of an increase in protectionism fol-
lowing the financial crisis of 2007-09 did
not materialise, nor did the growth of the
1990s and 2000s re-establish itself. Fi-
nance was tamer; China was richer and de-
veloping its internal market; transport was
no longer getting cheaper. As a share of glo-
bal gdp, neither global trade, foreign direct
investment, nor stocks of cross-border
bank lending returned to their 2000s peak.
And then, belatedly, fears about protec-
tionism came good with the election of
President Donald Trump. In 2018 he
launched a trade war against China; he ap-
plied tariffs in the name of national securi-
ty; his administration hog-tied the World
Trade Organisation’s appellate court.
Optimists might have seen the 2020s
getting off to a slightly better start. The
“Phase One” deal between America and
China, signed on January 15th, left tariffs
six times higher than they had been before
Mr Trump launched his trade war.
The covid-19 pandemic has since, by
curtailing trade across the Pacific, made it
very hard to see how China can increase
its imports from America in line with the
Phase One deal’s requirements. But that is
the least of the trading world’s worries.
The United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development is predicting that
covid-19 will reduce flows of foreign direct
invest-ment by 30-40%; the World Bank
expects remittances to fall by 20%; the
wto reck-ons trade could fall by as much
as a third. Much of this carnage is because
of crashing demand, not new barriers to
trade. But the crisis has not made
international com-merce any easier.
Travel bans, quarantines and a wide-
spread desire to stay at home even among
those not ordered to do so means that the
movement of individuals from place to
place, the one aspect of globalisation that
had continued from strength to strength,
came to a juddering halt.
Fewer passengers means fewer planes
means less room for air freight. In a fore-
cast of covid-related costs made this April,
the wto took into account higher air-cargo
prices, extra time spent in transit for goods
having to go through more stringent border
checks, and travel restrictions making
trade in services and the delivery of equip-
ment that needs bespoke installation more
difficult. Overall, the wto thinks the rise in
costs could be equivalent to a 3.4% global
tariff. For comparison, in 2018 the global
average tariff was around 8%.
As firms have foundered, fears have
mounted that foreign state-supported
companies will swoop in and snap them
up. The European Commission has urged
member states to be “particularly vigilant”
in making sure businesses are not sold off.
The German, Italian and Spanish govern-
ments have all tightened their processes
for screening foreign investment. The Aus-
tralian government is requiring that all for-
eign investments be approved by the For-
eign .
Mergers & Acquistitions New Rules of AttractionNovember 15th .docxARIV4
Mergers & Acquistitions: New Rules of Attraction
November 15th 2014 From The Economist print edition
Weblink - http://www.economist.com/news/business/21632675-latest-boom-dealmaking-appears-more-sensible-its-predecessors-valuations-areThe latest boom in dealmaking appears more sensible than its predecessors. But valuations are creeping into the danger zone
RUCE WASSERSTEIN was probably the most famous mergers and acquisitions (M&A) banker on Wall Street in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet "Bid 'em up Bruce", who died in 2009, was ambivalent about his trade. The best rainmakers were capable men, he once wrote, but dealmaking also attracted "hustlers and swaggering mediocrities". And whereas takeovers made the business world more dynamic, they also led to "pain, dislocations and blunders".
Whether dealmaking is sensible is once more an important question, because M&A are back with a vengeance, after a lull following the financial crisis. Worldwide, $3.6 trillion of deals have been announced this year, reckons Bloomberg, an information provider, approaching the peak reached in 2007. In pharmaceuticals (see next story) and among media firms the activity is frantic. Deals worth more than $10 billion are again common. America and Britain, with their open markets for corporate control, account for a disproportionate share of the action. So do cross-border deals, which have risen from a sixth of activity in the mid-1990s to 43% today.
Long experience of booms and slumps in M&A has made investors wary. Veteran fund managers and academics argue that deals satisfy executives' vanity and enrich their bankers, but destroy value for shareholders. Reflecting this worry, when a firm announces an acquisition its shares have tended to fall, as investors fret that the premium it is paying will exceed the benefit from the synergies it will reap. However, since 2012 acquirers' share prices have generally been stable or have risen, according to McKinsey, a consulting firm. That begs an intriguing and dangerous question. Might this time be different?
On paper, M&A make sense. When two firms combine they can cut duplicated overheads, raising their margins. By adding together their market shares they can gain pricing power over customers and suppliers. By cross-selling each other's product ranges in each other's geographic markets, merging firms can make their combined sales a lot bigger than the sum of their individual ones.
M&A folklore, however, dwells on giant catastrophes, such as the combinations of Time Warner and AOL in 2000 just as the dotcom bubble burst, or Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and ABN AMRO in 2007, as the subprime crisis struck. Yet some of the world's most successful firms are the result of giant deals. Exxon became the energy industry's top dog thanks to its purchase in 1999 of Mobil, which had an under-appreciated collection of global assets. AB Inbev has done $100 billion of deals over two decades to become the world's biggest brewer, with thirst- ...
MTBiz is for you if you are looking for contemporary information on business, economy and especially on banking industry of Bangladesh. You would also find periodical information on Global Economy and Commodity Markets.
Signature content of MTBiz is its Article of the Month (AoM), as depicted on Cover Page of each issue, with featured focus on different issues that fall into the wide definition of Market, Business, Organization and Leadership. The AoM also covers areas on Innovation, Central Banking, Monetary Policy, National Budget, Economic Depression or Growth and Capital Market. Scale of coverage of the AoM both, global and local subject to each issue.
MTBiz is a monthly Market Review produced and distributed by Group R&D, MTB since 2009.
Start-up losses are mounting and innovation is slowing, but venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, consultants, university researchers, and business schools are hyping new technologies more than ever before. This hype is facilitated by changes in online media, including the rise of social media. This paper describes how the professional incentives of experts and the changes in online media have increased hype and how this hype makes it harder for policy makers, managers, scientists, engineers, professors, and students to understand new technologies and make good decisions. We need less hype and more level-headed economic analysis and this paper describes how this economic analysis can be done. Here is a link to the journal, Issues in Science & Technology: www.issues.org
EDITORS PICK2,374 views Mar 30, 2020,0937 am EDTForbesCoro.docxbudabrooks46239
EDITORS' PICK|2,374 views| Mar 30, 2020,09:37 am EDT
Forbes
Coronavirus Highlights U.S. Strategic Vulnerabilities Spawned By Over-Reliance On China
Loren ThompsonSenior Contributor
Aerospace & Defense
I write about national security, especially its business dimensions.
President Trump has been criticized for highlighting the Chinese origins of the current coronavirus crisis. Whether such comments are constructive or not, the crisis has provoked a broader debate about the role that China plays in the American economy.
In the two decades since Beijing was admitted to the World Trade Organization, it has gradually eclipsed America’s preeminence as a manufacturing nation. For instance, the U.S. had two dozen aluminum smelters within its borders when the new century began; by the time President Trump took office, only five remained of which two were functioning at full capacity.
Chinese smelters have no inherent pricing advantage, so critics have correctly concluded that China became the world’s largest producer (and exporter) of aluminum through the use of subsidies and other trade-distorting practices. A similar pattern prevails in steel, which explains why both industries became early targets of Trump tariffs.
More broadly, China has tended to dominate production of every new technology in recent years, from smart phones to wind turbines to solar panels to commercial drones. U.S. officials are unanimous in agreeing that at least part of the reason China has become the world’s biggest manufacturing center is traceable to the kind of mercantilist practices supposedly banned by WTO rules.
What brought coronavirus into this discussion was Washington’s realization early in the pandemic of how dependent the U.S. has become on Chinese sources of drugs. The South China Morning Post reported in December that almost all of the ibuprofen and hydrocortisone, and most of the acetaminophen, consumed in the U.S. originates in China. So do many generic prescription drugs; even when they are manufactured in India or other countries, they often require active ingredients made only in China.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration admits it lacks the capacity to track the supply chain of imported drugs. The value of those pharmaceutical imports, at $350 million per day, exceeds the value of cell phone imports. The U.S. thus may have developed vulnerabilities in the availability of drugs needed during wartime without knowing it.
This is not a xenophobic fantasy. The last penicillin producer in the U.S. closed over a decade ago after facing price competition from heavily subsidized Chinese companies. The South China Morning Post found 80% of antibiotics consumed in the U.S. are made in China.
There is no indication this occurred with a military purpose in mind, but that doesn’t mean Beijing wouldn’t leverage what one author calls its “global chokehold” on drugs and their constituent compounds in a conflict.
But drugs are just the beginning of the problem. The U.S. h.
1. The Wall Street Journal - Europe - 10/24/2016 Page : A001
Copyright (c)2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 10/24/2016
October 24, 2016 10:42 am (GMT -1:00) Powered by TECNAVIA
Copy Reduced to 46% from original to fit letter page
MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2016 ~ VOL. XXXIV NO. 187 WSJ.com
CONTENTS
Business & Fin.. B1-4
Crossword.............. A14
Europe File............... A2
Finance & Mkts..... B9-12
Heard on Street. B12
Journal Report. B5-8
Markets Digest... B10
Opinion.............. A12-13
Review................. A8-10
Technology............... B3
U.S. News.................. A7
Weather................... A14
World News........ A2-5
s Copyright 2016 Dow Jones &
Company. All Rights Reserved
What’s
News
Two dozen billionaires
have spent $88 million on
the 2016 presidential cam-
paign, with most of the
money going to Clinton. A1
Trump outlined plans for
his first 100 days if he is
elected president and re-
peated complaints of a
“rigged” political system. A7
Kurdish forces claimed
new advances against Is-
lamic State in the battle for
Mosul, but the extremists hit
back elsewhere in Iraq. A4
Fighting returned to the
Syrian city of Aleppo after a
three-day truce expired
with no aid deliveries or
medical evacuations. A4
Spain’s Rajoy was as-
sured of re-election as pre-
mier when his Socialist ri-
vals conceded defeat. A3
China’s Xi called for party
loyalty, culminating a media
blitz to hail Communist sac-
rifices during the “Long
March” of the 1930s. A5
Thailand’s Yingluck said
the junta that overthrew her
government fined her nearly
$1 billion over a botched
rice-subsidy program. A5
Maritime nations are
leaning toward setting rules
next week to cut the sulfur
in the fuel of oceangoing
vessels by over 85%. B4
South Africa initiated its
withdrawal from the Inter-
national Criminal Court. A4
AT&T is betting on tele-
vision with its more
than $80 billion deal for
Time Warner, while rival
Verizon is looking to Silicon
Valley to fuel growth. A1
BAT could catch up with
its tobacco industry rivals in
marketing cigarette alterna-
tives if it succeeds in its $47
billion bid for Reynolds. B1
Rockwell Collins is paying
$6.4 billion to buy B/E in a
deal that would unite two of
the global aerospace indus-
try’s biggest suppliers. B4
A SpaceX rocket blast
last month likely was linked
to fueling procedures rather
than a manufacturing flaw,
investigators believe. B4
Japanese regulators
cautioned against overly
strict lending standards by
banks to businesses. B9
All-Stars, a fund that bets
on Chinese tech and con-
sumer firms, has posted a
12% return this year despite
China’s slowing growth. B9
Moody’s expects the U.S.
to sue over bond grades it is-
sued prior to the 2008 hous-
ing-market collapse. B11
China Resources Pharma
has raised $1.8 billion in
one of the biggest Hong
Kong IPOs of the year. B12
Friday’s attack on web-
sites stemmed from video-
game players’ efforts to
slow their opponents. B3
Business&Finance
World-Wide
€3.20; CHF5.50; £2.00;
U.S. Military (Eur.) $2.20
DJIA 18145.71 g 0.09% NASDAQ 5257.40 À 0.30% NIKKEI 17184.59 g 0.30% STOXX600 344.29 À 0.0001% BRENT 45.95 À 0.39% GOLD 1265.90 À 0.02% EURO 1.0868 g 0.57%
EUROPE EDITION
Imagine a Sane
Donald Trump
OPINION | A13
SMALLER ECONOMIES
DRAW FRESH EYES
JOURNAL REPORT: WEALTH MANAGEMENT | B5
Calais Braces for Evacuation of Migrant Camp
NEILHALL/REUTERS
FACING OFF: Minor clashes broke out on Sunday between French police, above, and migrants at the refugee camp in Calais known as
the Jungle. On Monday, the camp is slated to be closed, and the inhabitants transferred to reception centers elsewhere in France.
The X-ray and CT scans showed a pro-
nounced bulge.
After reports of Galaxy Note 7 smart-
phones catching fire spread in early Sep-
tember, Samsung Electronics Co. executives
debated how to respond. Some were skepti-
cal the incidents amounted to much, ac-
cording to people familiar with the meet-
ings, but others thought the company
needed to act decisively.
A laboratory report said scans of some
faulty devices showed a protrusion in Note 7
By Jonathan Cheng in Seoul and John
D. McKinnon in Washington
Faced with the same satu-
rated wireless market, the two
biggest telecom companies in
the U.S. have placed divergent
bets on the future.
With its more than $80 bil-
lion agreement to buy Time
Warner Inc., AT&T Inc. has
turned to television while Veri-
zon Communications Inc. has
looked to Silicon Valley, with its
$4.4 billion purchase of AOL last
year and pending $4.8 billion
acquisition of Yahoo Inc.
Both operators are trying to
solve the same riddle—each
with a different piece of the ill-
fated 2001 merger of AOL and
Time Warner.
They both have millions of
wireless subscribers who pay
monthly fees to use their net-
works to share photos, watch
videos and tap into social net-
works. But that wireless business
alone lacks the means to drive
growth now that the majority of
Americans have a smartphone.
At the same time, their two
smaller rivals are chipping away
at their subscriber base.
“They need to find a path for-
ward for their core U.S. business
that offers something better
than inexorable decline,” said
Craig Moffett, an analyst at Mof-
fettNathanson LLC. The internet,
mobile phones and smartphones
fueled rapid growth, but “for the
first time in memory, there is no
‘next big thing’ in telecom.”
AT&T’s agreement to buy
Time Warner doubles down on
its view that traditional televi-
Please see DEAL page A2
BY RYAN KNUTSON
AT&T,
Verizon
Set Own
Strategies
of Icelanders, is an online da-
tabase that contains the full
genealogy of 720,000 Iceland-
ers, living and de-
ceased. Assembled by
combining old Icelan-
dic genealogy books
and church records, it
launched online in
January 2003 and
gives Icelanders an
outlet for their crav-
ing for genealogy, an
ardent hobby for
many in the country
of 330,000.
Now, as social me-
dia and apps expand
the dating pool, many
people are turning to the web-
site to ensure they aren’t
swimming in the same gene
pool.
On Íslendingabók, Mr.
Geir Konráð Theodórsson
thought he had chemistry with
a young woman he was con-
versing with via the popular
dating app Tinder. The conver-
sations were going well, so
they decided to move it to
Facebook. Facebook revealed
some mutual friends between
the pair: her mother, her
grandmother and the sister of
her grandmother.
“This is suspicious,” she
messaged him.
Mr. Theodórsson, 30, lives in
Borgarnes, a town located on a
peninsula in western Iceland. It
has a population of fewer than
2,000. With their mutual
friends signaling a red flag, he
logged into Íslendingabók.
Íslendingabók, or the Book
BY JENNA BELHUMEUR
has been Donald Sussman,
founder of Paloma Partners, a
Greenwich, Conn., hedge fund.
Mr. Sussman donated $19 mil-
lion to Mrs. Clinton’s super
PAC through September, and
an aide said he had donated
another $2 million this month.
The second-largest donor
has been Robert Mercer, an
executive at the New York
hedge fund Renaissance Tech-
nologies. Mr. Mercer, who ear-
lier this cycle spent $13 mil-
lion bankrolling a super PAC
to support Texas Sen. Ted
Cruz’s presidential campaign,
has since spent another $2
million to support Mr. Trump.
Including the billionaires,
about 56 donors in both par-
ties who wrote checks of $1
Please see MONEY page A7
batteries supplied by Samsung SDI Co., a
company affiliate, while phones with batter-
ies from another supplier didn’t.
It wasn’t a definitive answer, and there
was no explanation for the bulges. But with
consumers complaining and telecom opera-
tors demanding answers, newly appointed
mobile chief D.J. Koh felt the company knew
enough to recall 2.5 million phones. His sug-
gestion was backed by Samsung’s third-gen-
eration heir apparent, Lee Jae-yong, who has
advocated for more openness at one of the
world’s most opaque conglomerates.
That decision in early September—to
push a sweeping recall based on what
Please see PHONES page A6
MISTAKE DOOMED
SAMSUNG’S NOTE 7
Rushed decision based on incomplete evidence forced firm to kill the model
A growing number of inves-
tors and policy makers, seeing
central banks as powerless to
revive an anemic global econ-
omy, are championing a resur-
gence of fiscal spending.
A move away from central-
bank-led policy, and toward the
use of the government’s taxing-
and-spending power to revive
growth, would end a years-long
economic era and could cause
upheaval in financial markets.
Investors, among them
bond king Bill Gross, once
feared that government profli-
gacy was a death knell for sov-
ereign bonds. Back in 2011, Mr.
Gross dumped U.S. Treasurys
and declared that U.K. govern-
ment bonds were resting “on a
bed of nitroglycerine.”
Today, he is calling for more
government spending.
It is far from clear that the
shift is yet upon the world—
especially Europe and Japan,
which are deep into the un-
precedented monetary experi-
ment of negative interest
rates. But there are glimmers
that it is coming.
The U.K. is wrestling with
the market and economic ef-
fects of its June vote to leave
the European Union. This
month, the prime minister
bashed loose monetary policy
while her Treasury chief talked
up spending on infrastructure
and housing. Other European
countries have eased off the
austerity that defined their re-
sponse to the continent’s years-
long debt crisis.
And the International Mone-
tary Fund, once a proponent of
budget cuts, now urges govern-
ments to spend more.
For several years, govern-
ments have feared incurring
more debt to do so. Instead,
they have left it to central banks
to lower the cost of borrowing
and thus encourage households
and businesses to spend.
That hyperactive monetary
policy has pushed up prices of
assets—including bonds—and
damped market volatility. Ex-
cept for the occasional “tan-
trum,” stocks and government
Please see SPEND page A2
BY JON SINDREU
Fiscal Stimulus Gains Fans
More investors back
government spending
as central-bank moves
fail to ignite growth
Spain’s Leadership Impasse Ends
RE-ELECTION: Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, shown above
in Brussels on Oct. 20, is headed for another term after his Socialist
rivals conceded defeat Sunday, ending a 10-month deadlock. A3
EMMANUELDUNAND/AGENCEFRANCE-PRESSE/GETTYIMAGES
Two dozen billionaires have
spent $88 million on the 2016
presidential campaign, bank-
rolling an election in which
both major-party nominees
have railed against the influ-
ence of money in politics.
Democrat Hillary Clinton
has been the largest benefi-
ciary of billionaires’ cash, with
19 of them donating a total of
$70 million to her top allied
super PAC, Priorities USA Ac-
tion, according to the latest
Federal Election Commission
disclosure. Four billionaires
have given $18 million to the
set of super PACs backing Re-
publican Donald Trump.
The largest individual do-
nor of the presidential election
BY REBECCA BALLHAUS
Billionaires Spend
More on Clinton
Theodórsson discovered he
and the woman from Tinder
had the same great-grandfa-
ther.
“We decided to
not speak of this
again and try to
avoid each other at
the next clan meet-
ing,” Mr. Theodórs-
son said.
Previously Mr.
Theodórsson had
been engaged to a
woman related five
generations back.
That was fine, he
said, though it was
still uncomfortable
when her grandmother and his
aunt spoke to each other using
terms of endearment reserved
for close relatives at the din-
Please see DATES page A6
Iceland’s Top Dating Rule: Make Sure You’re Not Cousins
Connections are common in a country of 330,000 citizens,
leading singles to check family backgrounds
Geir Konráð
Theodórsson
Opinion: AT&T’s wireless leap
over Obama.............................. A12
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