Wednesday, March 29, 2017

The EU has blocked a £22.5 billion mega-merger between the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse

The EU has blocked a £22.5 billion mega-merger between the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse

London Stock ExchangeReuters/Suzanne Plunkett
LONDON — The European Union blocked a mega-merger of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and German exchange Deutsche Börse (DBAG) on Wednesday, only hours before the UK formally announces its intention to leave the European Union.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU competition regulator, blocked the £22.5 billion ($28 billion) deal to create an Anglo-German exchange group because both groups failed to offset concerns about a "de facto monopoly" in the markets for clearing European fixed income instruments.
Fixed income instruments refer primarily to bonds and repurchase agreements. A statement from the EU said that both groups "are the only relevant providers of these services" in Europe — meaning the merger would have combined DBAG's clearing house in Frankfurt and LSEG's clearing houses in London, Paris, and Rome.
Vestager said in a statement: "The European economy depends on well-functioning financial markets. That is not just important for banks and other financial institutions. The whole economy benefits when businesses can raise money on competitive financial markets.
"The merger between Deutsche Börse and the London Stock Exchange would have significantly reduced competition by creating a de facto monopoly in the crucial area of clearing of fixed income instruments. As the parties failed to offer the remedies required to address our competition concerns, the Commission has decided to prohibit the merger," she added.
Neil Wilson, a market analyst at ETX Capital, said in an email: "Brexit effectively killed this deal off nine months ago so it’s fitting that EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager delivered the coup de grace just a couple of hours before the UK triggers Article 50.
"There were always fierce arguments about the location of the HQ and clearing and the deal never really sat well with regulators.
"They could never agree to do what was really required to make this work – concentrate clearing in either London or Frankfurt. The ECB has made it clear just how much it dislikes London’s domination of euro clearing."

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Amazon has acquired a Middle Eastern retailer that was once valued at $1 billion

Amazon has acquired a Middle Eastern retailer that was once valued at $1 billion

Jeff BezosAmazon founder Jeff Bezos.Getty Images
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Amazon announced on Tuesday that it had agreed to acquire the Dubai, United Arab Emirates-based online retailer Souq.com.
The acquisition represents Amazon's first move into serving the Middle East, which is home to over 200 million people.
The value of the deal was not disclosed, but Souq.com was valued at about $1 billion (£800 million) in its most recent funding round.
Several publications reported that the deal was coming last week. TechCrunch cited sources saying the deal was worth $650 million (£517 million).
Amazon said it expected the acquisition to close by the end of the year.
Russ Grandinetti, the senior vice president of Amazon's international consumer business, said in a statement: "Amazon and Souq.com share the same DNA — we're both driven by customers, invention, and long-term thinking."
He added: "Souq.com pioneered e-commerce in the Middle East, creating a great shopping experience for their customers. We're looking forward to both learning from and supporting them with Amazon technology and global resources. And together, we'll work hard to provide the best possible service for millions of customers in the Middle East."
Souq.com'sounder and CEO, Syrian-born entrepreneur Ronaldo Mouchawar, added: "By becoming part of the Amazon family, we'll be able to vastly expand our delivery capabilities and customer selection much faster, as well as continue Amazon's great track record of empowering sellers."
Souq.com is the largest online retail platform in the Arab world, according to CNBC.
(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

Monday, March 27, 2017

Traders betting against Wall Street's favorite Trump trade are making a killing

Traders betting against Wall Street's favorite Trump trade are making a killing

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The biggest beneficiaries of the so-called Trump rally are giving up some of the gains they made after the election.
Financial stocks on the S&P 500 jumped 26% after the election, and were the poster child for Wall Street's biggest bets on the new administration.
Last week, traders increased their bets against banking stocks as uncertainty mounted over the future of the American Health Care Act. According to S3, a financial analytics firm, short sellers in the top ten bank stocks last week gained 6.35% net of financing and mark to market. Screen Shot 2017 03 27 at 12.13.47 PMS3 Partners
GOP leadership eventually pulled its bill to replace Obamacare on Friday as party divisions meant the House would not have had a majority vote.
Trump's agenda includes rolling back some post-crisis regulations and corporate tax reform, both of which make the sector more attractive. Also, if many of the pro-growth promises are kept, the Federal Reserve would probably raise interest rates in step with rising inflation, and that would help banks earn more for lending. 
But financials topped out on March 1, and traders who sought to profit from a reversal of the uptrend are starting to count some gains.
Short interest should increase if the sector's losses continue, said Ihor Dusaniwsky, the head of research at S3 Partners, in a note. The three stocks with the highest short interest last week were JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.  
Financials led losses in early trading on Monday with a 2% decline. 
banks after trump COTDBusiness Insider/Andy Kiersz

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Friday, March 24, 2017

Saudi Arabia is in 'serious discussions' with the NYSE in what could be the biggest IPO ever

Saudi Arabia is in 'serious discussions' with the NYSE in what could be the biggest IPO ever

Saudi AramcoA Saudi Aramco employee sits in the area of its stand at the Middle East Petrotech 2016, an exhibition and conference for the refining and petrochemical industries, in Manama, Bahrain, September 27, 2016.REUTERS/Hamad I Mohammed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is having "serious discussions" with the New York Stock Exchange about having the NYSE as one of the exchanges for state oil giant Saudi Aramco's IPO, the Saudi foreign minister told Fox News on Thursday.
"Our objective is to try to complete the IPO sometime in 2018. There are serious discussions with the New York Stock Exchange about having the NYSE be one of the exchanges for the Aramco IPO and I believe the decision will be made on the financial merits," Adel al-Jubeir told Fox News.
(Reporting by Eric Walsh; Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2017. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Apple just bought the app it once crowned 'most innovative' and made it free for everyone

Apple just bought the app it once crowned 'most innovative' and made it free for everyone

workflowWorkflow
If you can't beat it, buy it. That's what Apple did on Wednesday when it acquired an app called Workflow, an automation app that it had labeled "most innovative" in 2015. 
Apple confirmed the acquisition to Business Insider on Wednesday but did not disclose the price or any other terms of the deal.
Workflow takes a complicated series of tasks, that would normally require opening multiple apps, and lets users press one button to get the job done. For example, if you want to let someone know you're running late, you can use the "running late" workflow to automatically find your next calendar event, get the travel time, create a text and fire off a message. 

It's so powerful that at the time, Business Insider's Alex Heath called it the "Swiss Army knife for completing tasks" and said it could potentially replace entire apps on your home screen.
Workflow first caught the eye of Apple first in 2015, and now the company confirmed it acquired it on Wednesday. In a rare move, the company is keeping the app alive in the App Store and setting its price to free. It previously cost $2.99.
As part of the deal, Workflow's creators — developers Ari Weinstein, Conrad Kramer, and Nick Frey — will be joining Apple, according to TechCrunch, which first reported the deal.
"We are thrilled to be joining Apple," said Weinstein in a statement to TechCrunch. "We’ve worked closely with Apple from the very beginning, from kickstarting our company as students attending WWDC to developing and launching Workflow and seeing its amazing success on the App Store. We can’t wait to take our work to the next level at Apple and contribute to products that touch people across the world."

Monday, March 20, 2017

Bitcoin just crashed 20% as the developers fight over its future

Bitcoin just crashed 20% as the developers fight over its future

After looking like it was on the edge of a cliff last week, Bitcoin crashed over the weekend and lost more than 20% of its value.
The crypto-currency fell as low as $970 and is trading at just over $1,000 this morning, after reaching $1,259 last week.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the crash is due to a disagreement among Bitcoin developers. Behind the scenes, there’s been a running two-year battle for how best to run the digital platform that forms the basis of the Bitcoin marketplace.
In the Bitcoin market, transactions get traded in batches known as “blocks”. Currently, the maximum size that can be processed for one block of transactions is one megabyte. Competing developers have been agitating to increase the size of the trading blocks as the network expands.
Recently, a proposal was raised to create a platform called Bitcoin Unlimited, which would put no size restrictions on the size of blocks for processing transactions. Developers who want to maintain the current version are adhering to a proposal called Bitcoin Core.
So what caused the crash?
Proponents of the Bitcoin Unlimited format are threatening to set up a “hard fork” for the Bitcoin marketplace, effectively an alternate software platform to trade Bitcoin on. The new format would be incompatible with the current platform, thus creating a split meaning that there would then be two versions of the currency.
A key driver of stability in the market for bitcoin is that every transaction is recorded and logged, which in turn creates an error-proof and transparent record of the currency’s transaction history. A dual market would muddy the waters around historical record keeping. The increased possibility of a dual market for bitcoin has therefore added to uncertainty and heightened liquidity risk for market participants.
On Friday, 20 bitcoin exchanges released a statement saying that they while they wouldn’t expressly endorse the new platform, “it is incumbent upon us to support a coherent, orderly, and industry-wide approach to preparing for and responding to a contentious hard fork”.
Get the latest Bitcoin price here.
Read the original article on Business Insider Australia. Copyright 2017. Follow Business Insider Australia on Twitter.

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