Tag: mar 30 2021

CINEWORLD LOSES $3 BILLION, GOES DEEPER INTO DEBT. The world’s second-largest chain of movie theaters lost $3 billion in 2020, compared to earning $212 million in profit in 2019. Revenues for the year were down 80 percent to $852 million, Cineworld reported. Box-office receipts likely will not return to 2019 levels until 2024, CEO Mooky...

As we reported in the Geopolitical section of this Trends Journal, as evidenced by the recent meeting with U.S. and Chinese government officials, Beijing will not take orders or follow rules set by Washington. (See or 23 March article, “CHINA TELLS U.S TO FU.”)  And, as we have forecast, the 20th century was the American...

Emilio Heredia Collado, a former oil trader with Glencore PLC, an Anglo-Swiss mining and commodity trading firm, has pleaded guilty in a San Francisco federal court to a conspiracy charge that he manipulated fuel oil prices from September 2012 to August 2016. Heredia directed other traders to enter buy or sell orders through the S&P...

News Corp, the owner of the Wall Street Journal and other business periodicals, has agreed to pay $349 million to buy the consumer or “trade” book division of Boston-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It was not specified whether Houghton would remain as its own brand or be subsumed by News Corp’s HarperCollins book imprint. Houghton’s list...

Not only airlines were crippled by the global collapse of air travel last year; U.S. airport shops and restaurants will lose $3.4 billion from July 2020 through December 2021, according to the Airport Restaurant and Retail Association. The figure equals about three years’ profit for airport retailers. Dubai Duty Free, a leading operator of airport...

On 22 March, Turkey’s financial markets seized up and its currency’s value slid after the weekend firing of central bank governor Naci Agbal. The lira, Turkey’s currency, lost 11 percent of its value for the week and the Borsa Istanbul 100 stock index fell 9.6 percent. Of the $16 billion in currency swaps that came...

For the ninth consecutive year, Japan’s legislature has passed a record-high budget, this time calling for ¥106.61 trillion to expand the social safety net to care for the world’s oldest population, handle increased national defense costs, and pay bills related to the COVID pandemic. Defense spending climbed to ¥5.34 trillion, its seventh consecutive record, as...

In Portugal and Denmark, where commercial interest rates have dipped below zero, some people with mortgages collect monthly payments from their lenders. Negative mortgage interest rates made their debut in 2014 when the European Central Bank cut benchmark rates to -0.25 percent to spark the Eurozone’s lagging economy. The arrangement was intended to be brief...

Although the global economy has slightly recovered from the COVID War that resulted in massive lockdowns, broad areas and populations are being left behind, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has again warned. “We are seeing overall improvement in the global economy, but with many countries and people…left behind,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said in a...