Category: TRENDS ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC FRONT

In 2022, inflation will leave developed nations with their lowest real interest rates in perhaps a half-century, according to calculations by the Financial Times. Real interest rates, which many economists consider an economy’s most important price, subtract the rate of inflation from posted interest rates; the difference is the actual cost of borrowing. For example,...

U.S. financial and technology companies, and their affiliates in China, are increasing their investments in Chinese semiconductor companies as the U.S. chip industry struggles to hold its market share, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation. U.S. firms were involved in 58 chip-industry deals in China from 2017 through 2020, more than twice as many...

IKEA: SALES AND PRICES UP, PROFITS DOWN Although online and in-store sales rose 6 percent to a record €49.1 billion, or about $57 billion, during its fiscal year ending 31 August, Ikea reported profits slumped 17 percent to €1.4 billion during the period. This was the second consecutive year of falling profits for the world’s...

DRUG MAKER NOVARTIS TO SELL ITS STAKE IN ROCHE Swiss drug giant Novartis will sell its roughly one-third ownership interest in rival Roche for $21 billion. Novartis has owned its share of Roche for almost 20 years, collecting about $6 billion in stock dividends over the period, according to the Financial Times. The sale is...

Lufthansa, Germany’s flagship airline, reported €17 million in third-quarter earnings, before interest and taxes. The airline filled 19.6 million seats in the period, just 46 percent of the number during the same quarter in 2019, it said, but reported new bookings for future flights at 80 percent of pre-COVID averages. The U.S. will open its...

Facebook—oops, we mean Meta—may open physical stores around the world to introduce the public to its augmented and virtual reality products, company insiders have told reporters with several news organizations. The products are gateways to the “metaverse,” Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg’s name for an environment in which people move seamlessly between physical and digital worlds....

On 5 November, a unit of China’s debt-plagued Evergrande Group property development company made a last-minute, $83.5-million bond payment a day before a grace period was to expire. We detailed the beginnings of the crisis in “China’s Real Estate Market Teeters on Evergrande Debt” (21 Sep 2021) and “Will Evergrande Dive Crash Chinese Markets?” (5...

On 4 November, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its affiliates (OPEC+) approved a 400,000-barrel-per-day increase in oil production to take place in December as planned. The group also denied requests from major consuming countries that it raise its output by as much as double that amount to ensure enough supplies to sustain the...

The number of ships anchored outside the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles has risen from about 60 in early October to nearly 80 now and there is no clear end to the pile-up in sight, Soren Skou, CEO of shipping giant Moller-Maersk said in a Financial Times interview last week. (See “Backlogged Ships...

Stock prices in emerging nations have remained flat through 2021, in contrast to soaring markets in the developed world, which have added about 20 percent in value, U.S. finance company MSCI reported. (See “Emerging Nations’ Recovery Lagging,” 13 Apr 2021). The performance gap between equity markets of developed and emerging countries is the widest since...