Zou Jiayi is president and chairwoman of the board of directors of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a multilateral development lender headquartered in Beijing and inaugurated in 2016. Before leading AIIB, Zou was deputy secretary general of the national committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, China’s top political advisory body. She previously held seni...
Zou Jiayi is president and chairwoman of the board of directors of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a multilateral development lender headquartered in Beijing and inaugurated in 2016. Before leading AIIB, Zou was deputy secretary general of the national committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, China’s top political advisory body. She previously held senior roles at the Ministry of Finance, including as vice-minister, and as part of her three decades of...
Insight with Haslinda Amin, a daily news program featuring in-depth, high-profile interviews and analysis to give viewers the complete picture on the stories that matter. The show features prominent leaders spanning the worlds of business, finance, politics and culture. (Source: Bloomberg)
Insight with Haslinda Amin, a daily news program featuring in-depth, high-profile interviews and analysis to give viewers the complete picture on the stories that matter. The show features prominent leaders spanning the worlds of business, finance, politics and culture. (Source: Bloomberg)
If Patrick Drahi’s recent restructuring of his French telecoms business showed how far certain borrowers can squeeze their lenders, just look at what he is doing on the other side of the pond. The tycoon has pushed holders of $22 billion of debt in another of his companies into an extremely tight corner and once again the fine print may be on his side. New York-listed Optimum Communications Inc., ...
If Patrick Drahi’s recent restructuring of his French telecoms business showed how far certain borrowers can squeeze their lenders, just look at what he is doing on the other side of the pond. The tycoon has pushed holders of $22 billion of debt in another of his companies into an extremely tight corner and once again the fine print may be on his side. New York-listed Optimum Communications Inc., formerly known as Altice USA, is in the viciously competitive businesses of cable-TV and broadband. It is laboring under unsustainable borrowings and some hefty debts are maturing from next April. The market capitalization has fallen from $16 billion to about $600 million over the past five years. The company could muddle through by raising cash through issuing yet more debt against some of its assets to settle what’s falling due. But that would just kick the can down the road. The overall borrowings are too big. Hence Optimum has said it is pursuing a “consensual repositioning of its capital structure.” In plain English: Creditors should agree to be paid back less than they’re owed. As with Drahi’s Altice France business, the drama essentially turns on the freedom he appears to have to shift assets from one subsidiary to another, while leaving behind the debt that is subsequently backed by less security. Optimum is now made up of two principle silos, East and West. East has assumed the higher quality assets including Optimum’s business in New York. It has a likely enterprise value of $11 billion, according to CreditSights research, and carries only $3.1 billion of debt. West by contrast may be worth only $5 billion, again per CreditSights, and that has to support some $22 billion in bonds and of loans. Sometimes in situations like this, debtholders will be sanguine about a company defaulting and going bust, allowing them to try to recover as much value as they can from what’s left. And if Optimum went bankrupt, West’s creditors may still have a claim on East’s residual equ...
European equities snapped a four-day losing streak, with energy shares leading gains in the index while the European Central Bank’s first interest-rate hike in three years lifted banks. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index closed 0.5% higher. Brent crude whipsawed to rise above $93 a barrel after President Donald Trump warned that the US would be hitting Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT.” The energy subindex added a...
European equities snapped a four-day losing streak, with energy shares leading gains in the index while the European Central Bank’s first interest-rate hike in three years lifted banks. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index closed 0.5% higher. Brent crude whipsawed to rise above $93 a barrel after President Donald Trump warned that the US would be hitting Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT.” The energy subindex added almost 2%, for its biggest daily gain in a month, while banks advanced 0.6%. The ECB raised interest rates to 2.25% as expected and warned inflation was widening out beyond energy. It also raised its inflation view for 2026 and 2027. However, investors are divided over how much the ECB can tighten policy. Money markets are pricing two more rate hikes by year-end but with higher energy prices clouding the economic outlook, the bank has also cut its growth forecasts. While the ECB hike was a “significant moment,” policymakers are unlikely to tighten policy much further, said Mark Wall , chief European economist at Deutsche Bank AG. “The question is ‘how far can this tightening cycle go?’ Not far, is our answer,” Wall said. “There is upside risk to inflation, but there is also downside risk to growth. One more hike in September and that’s it.” Software stocks dropped after Oracle Corp.’s earnings showed weak sales from this segment of its business. SAP SE closed down after recovering from losses of 7%. By contrast, chipmakers rallied as Oracle’s earnings also unveiled higher data centers spending than analysts had expected. ASML International NV jumped more than 5%. Among individual movers, Deutsche Telekom AG slid as much as 4.6% after the Wall Street Journal reported the German firm is trying to push through a merger with T-Mobile US. Hugo Boss AG rallied more than 9% after Frasers Group Plc offered to buy out the German label for about €2 billion ($2.3 billion). After trailing their US counterparts for three months, European stocks have finally stopped underperforming in Jun...
Merkel Receives The First European Order Of Merit Award, Repeats Call For Crackdown On Free Speech Authored by Jonathan Turley, The European Union recently announced the first recipients of its new European Order of Merit, the organization’s highest award. The headliner was Angela Merkel, former Federal Chancellor of Germany, who indeed personifies the European Union for both her fans and her crit...
Merkel Receives The First European Order Of Merit Award, Repeats Call For Crackdown On Free Speech Authored by Jonathan Turley, The European Union recently announced the first recipients of its new European Order of Merit, the organization’s highest award. The headliner was Angela Merkel, former Federal Chancellor of Germany, who indeed personifies the European Union for both her fans and her critics. For many years, some of us have criticized Merkel as one of the leading forces behind European censorship efforts that have eviscerated the “ Indispensable Right.” Not surprisingly, Merkel called for more censorship and attacks on free speech to a thrilled audience of EU bureaucrats and globalists. In one of the most ironic moments, Merkel declared, “Europe was not handed to us. It was built treaty by treaty, crisis by crisis and by people who chose solidarity over division and cooperation over self-interest.” Indeed, it was not handed to them. As I discuss in my new book, “ Rage and the Republic, the EU was formed by design to incrementally get citizens in Europe to give up their national identities and rights: The EEC worked to remove barriers to trade and coordinate national regulations to achieve greater uniformity. As nations conformed to such transnational standards, the final step toward transnational governance became less of a conceptual barrier for citizens, particularly younger citizens… …The evolution of the EU is a cautionary tale. It began with assurances of marginal coordinating bodies and policies over areas like nuclear power and scientific research. Through this planned incrementalism, each insular move was defended on its narrow purpose while dismissing objections as nationalistic or conspiratorial. That planned incrementalism worked brilliantly in getting citizens to accept transnational governance. Merkel was critical in that effort. She is blamed for opening the borders to a flood of undocumented immigrants that has caused rising violence and prot...