China’s most-indebted property developer is scrambling as officials push an aggressive cleanup of the bubble-prone sector. The ongoing pain of $25 billion Evergrande, with businesses spanning theme parks to electric vehicles, is a vivid measure of how far President Xi Jinping will go to reallocate capital and de-risk the economy.
Corona Capital is a column updated throughout the day by Breakingviews columnists around the world with short, sharp pandemic-related insights.
To most people, “the Netherlands” and “paint” means Rubens, Rembrandt or Vincent van Gogh. In looking to splurge 1.4 billion euros on Finnish coatings peer Tikkurila, aggressively crashing U.S. rival PPG Industries’s planned takeover, Amsterdam-listed Akzo Nobel is displaying little of the grace or finesse of the Dutch masters.
Jakob Stausholm will have to pick up a travel guide to Ulaanbaatar. Rio Tinto’s new chief executive has a challenging to-do list and atop it sits the miner’s troubled $10 billion Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold project, located 700 kilometres from the Mongolian capital. Trying to satisfy all the interested parties at once is probably a fool’s errand.
China powered through the pandemic on a mix of social tranquilizers and economic Red Bull, and now it’s time to deal with the headache. The world's second-largest economy managed to grow 2.3% in 2020 thanks to tough pandemic measures, an export boom and a credit flood. But local governments’ fiscal stress is acute, social frictions are rising, and the private sector is still struggling.
Big U.S. banks are awash with capital, trading like it’s the end of days, and raising abundant capital for their clients. Employees’ pay has held up, and shareholders will soon be the happy recipients of sizeable stock buybacks. But there’s something missing: the lenders aren’t lending.
The next U.S. president has a chance to test his own art of the deal. Joe Biden on Thursday announced an ambitious stimulus plan, including additional $1,400 payments for individuals. It also includes liberal causes like boosting the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. With the slimmest Democratic control of a 50-50 Senate, Biden will have to compromise.
The wacky race to replace ousted boss Jean Pierre Mustier at $21 billion UniCredit is in full swing. Headhunters are sounding out high-level executives such as former UBS investment banking head Andrea Orcel and ex-Credit Suisse boss Tidjane Thiam, as well as a raft of Italy-based bankers. The list of genuinely credibly candidates is somewhat shorter.
It's good to be able to turn to friends for support. Chinese phone maker Xiaomi lost some $10 billion in market value following its addition to a U.S. blacklist of companies deemed to have military ties. Others already tagged, including China Mobile, have recently seen local buying ease the pain of U.S. selling. Xiaomi, a market darling, can expect something similar.
Billionaire donors hold more sway than companies in the increasingly expensive business of Washington elections. Firms from JPMorgan to AT&T; are rethinking political donations after last week's Capitol violence. But it’s people like the late Sheldon Adelson and Mike Bloomberg who have far deeper pockets.
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