Bloomberg Business and Finance Summary

2014-09-12 
Bloomberg Business and Finance Summary

The following are today's top stories from Business and Finance:

1.  China Credit Gauge Misses Estimate as Growth Risks Rise: Economy
2.  European Stock-Index Futures Rise Before Draghi Meets Ministers
3.  Recession Threat Ignored as Europe Profit Revisions Go Positive
4.  Pound Seen Tumbling Up to 10% on Scottish Yes Vote: Currencies
5.  Treasuries Taper Tantrum Ruled Out by BofA Seeing Japan Buying
6.  BASF Wintershall Buys Statoil Oil, Gas Assets for $1.25 Billion
7.  Google Taps World’s Biggest App Market in Bid to Close Apple Gap
8.  Citigroup’s Diners Club Said to Draw Interest From Japan Banks
9.  Netflix Is About to Learn How Crazy Eyes Translates Into French
10. SocGen Says Buy Pummeled Rand Amid Rate Outlook: Market Reversal
11. Tokyo Last-Train-Home Culture Under Fire as Abe Backs Women
12. Russians Skip Riviera Retreats as Sanctions Ground Private Jets

1)  China Credit Gauge Misses Estimate as Growth Risks Rise: Economy
    (Bloomberg) -- China’s broadest measure of new credit trailed analyst estimates in August, adding to the government’s challenge to meet its economic-growth target amid a slumping property market and a pullback in manufacturing.
     Aggregate financing was 957.4 billion yuan ($156 billion), the People’s Bank of China said today in Beijing, compared with the 1.135 trillion yuan median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. New local-currency loans were 702.5 billion yuan, and M2 money supply grew 12.8 percent from a year earlier.
     Today’s report adds to evidence the economy is losing steam after July aggregate financing slumped and recent data showed moderation in manufacturing and a drop in imports. Premier Li Keqiang this month said some volatility in growth is inevitable and the government will stick with targeted policies.
     “Banks are reluctant to lend because there aren’t enough good projects,” said Dong Tao, chief regional economist for ...
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2)  European Stock-Index Futures Rise Before Draghi Meets Ministers
    (Bloomberg) -- European stock-index futures rose, signaling equities may pare a weekly drop, before European Central Bank President Mario Draghi meets euro-area finance ministers. U.S. stock-index futures were little changed, while Asian shares fell.
     Rheinmetall AG may be active after a report that it’s in talks with ThyssenKrupp AG about purchasing its marine-systems business. RWE AG may move after JPMorgan Chase & Co. advised investors to sell the shares.
     Futures on the Euro Stoxx 50 Index expiring this month climbed 0.3 percent to 3,242 at 7:17 a.m. in London as investors awaited data from the U.S. that may show retail sales and consumer confidence increased in the world’s largest economy.
Contracts on the U.K.’s FTSE 100 Index added 0.1 percent.
Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures gained less than 0.1 percent today, while the MSCI Asia Pacific Index retreated 0.2 percent.
     The Stoxx Europe 600 Index, the region-wide benchmark gauge, has retreated ...
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3)  Recession Threat Ignored as Europe Profit Revisions Go Positive
    (Bloomberg) -- In the tug-of-war between investor optimism and analyst skepticism in Europe, the advantage is going to the equity bulls.
     Analysts who raised profit estimates for European companies exceeded those cutting them this month for the first time since April 2012, a sign of optimism after corporate income fell in two of the last three years. A revision index compiled weekly by Citigroup Inc. turned positive on Sept. 5 after the European Central Bank unexpectedly cut interest rates and announced a plan to buy securities.
     “It’s good to finally see revisions improve as analysts feed the lower euro into their forecast models,” said Lars Kreckel, a London-based global equity strategist at Legal & General Investment Management. “With the ECB becoming more proactive, it seems everything is coming into place for a positive story.”
     The Euro Stoxx 50 Index rallied 60 percent in the two years through June and its valuation increased to the most ...
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4)  Pound Seen Tumbling Up to 10% on Scottish Yes Vote: Currencies
    (Bloomberg) -- The pound, already suffering its worst month in more than a year, has the potential to tumble 10 percent should the Scots vote for independence from the U.K., according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
     A victory by Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond’s Yes campaign would mean a 5 percent to 10 percent slide within a month, said 61 percent of the 31 respondents polled by Bloomberg Sept. 5-11. Sterling is already down 5.5 percent from a five- year high in July, and touched a 10-month low this week as momentum for the separatists increased.
     “The question is if it’s one bad day or if it just continues and continues as people take fright,” Alan Clarke, an economist at Bank of Nova Scotia’s Scotiabank unit in London, who took part in Bloomberg’s survey, said yesterday by phone.
The pound may weaken to about ...
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5)  Treasuries Taper Tantrum Ruled Out by BofA Seeing Japan Buying
    (Bloomberg) -- Japan is likely to replace China and U.S. banks as the lead supporter of Treasuries as the Federal Reserve moves toward ending bond buying, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
     Policy makers who next meet Sept. 16-17 have cut purchases of government debt and mortgage-backed securities to $25 billion a month from $85 billion starting last year. Buying by U.S.
banks driven by rules limiting risk-taking and China more than offset the Fed’s tapering, keeping long-term interest rates low, said David Woo, head of global rates and currencies at Bank of America in New York. This is the Fed’s third round of purchases, or quantitative easing, to drive down borrowing costs.
     “Effectively, there has been no tapering whatsoever so far,” Woo said at a round table in Tokyo on Sept. 8. “As the Fed was trying to unwind QE3, U.S. banks and China started a secret QE4.”
     China held $1.27 trillion of U.S. notes and bonds at the ...
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6)  BASF Wintershall Buys Statoil Oil, Gas Assets for $1.25 Billion
    (Bloomberg) -- BASF SE’s oil and gas arm Wintershall has agreed to buy oil and gas assets from Norway’s Statoil ASA for $1.25 billion to secure more European supplies.
     BASF is acquiring a share in two fields, a development project and a pipeline project, the Ludwigshafen, Germany-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. Daily production in Norway will increase to around 60,000 barrels of oil equivalent.
     The asset purchase comes two years after the German company paid Statoil $1.35 billion for stakes in oil and gas sites that helped it boost North Sea output more than tenfold.
     “With the acquisition of these shares in oil and gas fields, we are continuing on our growth course in Norway and intensifying the cooperation with our partner Statoil,” said Kurt Bock, chief executive officer of BASF.
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7)  Google Taps World’s Biggest App Market in Bid to Close Apple Gap
    (Bloomberg) -- Though Google Inc.’s Android is the most popular smartphone software, the company lags behind Apple Inc. in generating revenue from mobile applications. Now Google is turning to a white cat and a gang of monsters to catch up.
     Google, which sells games and other media through its Play online store, is boosting support for developers in Japan to take more of their apps overseas. Companies such as Colopl Inc.
and Square Enix Holdings Co. have successful products in their home country and have the opportunity to do even better abroad, said Chris Yerga, Asia head of Google’s online store.
     Google, which takes a 30 percent cut of sales through Play, is offering translation support in Japan, providing more analytics and expanding its own staff to help market content abroad. Colopl, which makes Shiro Neko (or White Cat) Project, and Mixi Inc., developer of Monster Strike, helped turn Japan into the biggest app market in the world in terms ...
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8)  Citigroup’s Diners Club Said to Draw Interest From Japan Banks
    (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc.’s Diners Club card brand in Japan is among assets drawing interest from lenders as the bank seeks bids for its retail operations in the country, people with knowledge of the matter said.
     Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., Mizuho Financial Group Inc., Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Holdings Inc. and Shinsei Bank Ltd. are among banks preparing to submit preliminary bids today, said the people, who asked not to be named, citing confidentiality. Citigroup is gauging interest in the consumer bank separately or as a package with the card unit, the people said.
     Citigroup, whose 33 branches in Japan represent less than 1 percent of its global total, is scaling back in the country as near-zero interest rates, tepid loan demand and slowing economic growth hamper profitability. Japanese banks may be attracted to the credit unit to obtain wealthy Diners Club members, said Toyoki ...
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9)  Netflix Is About to Learn How Crazy Eyes Translates Into French
    (Bloomberg) -- France, meet “Yeux Fous.”
     This month, Netflix Inc., the world’s largest subscription streaming service, is bringing inmate Suzanne “Crazy Eyes”
Warren and the rest of the cast of its original series “Orange Is the New Black” to six European nations, including France and Germany, along with other programming.
     It aims to reduce reliance on the U.S. market and establish global dominance before Time Warner Inc.’s HBO Go and Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Instant Video do, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Sept. 15 issue.
     The big question is whether Netflix can navigate rules that shield homegrown media companies and local culture. Shows that play well in one country may not in another, so Netflix will have to localize at least some content, a costly undertaking.
     “Europe is an attractive market for a subscription service,” says Richard Broughton, an analyst at researcher IHS Inc. “People are willing to pay for TV subscriptions ...
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10) SocGen Says Buy Pummeled Rand Amid Rate Outlook: Market Reversal
    (Bloomberg) -- The rand’s slump to weaker than 11 per dollar for the first time since February makes it a buy for Societe Generale SA, which until this week recommended bets against the South African currency.
     The decline has taken the rand to levels that historical trading patterns suggest are extreme and often portend a reversal. It may rally as much as 3 percent to 10.60 per dollar, leading a rebound in emerging-market currencies, Benoit Anne, the London-based head of emerging-market strategy at SocGen, said in a Sept. 10 note.
     South Africa’s currency weakened 2.9 percent during the past two weeks amid speculation the Federal Reserve may move more quickly to raise interest rates next year, attracting funds away from high-yielding currencies. Interest-rate derivatives predict that South Africa’s Monetary Policy Committee, which meets Sept. 16-18, will raise borrowing costs for a third time this year by November to curb inflation, a move that would bolster ...
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11) Tokyo Last-Train-Home Culture Under Fire as Abe Backs Women
    (Bloomberg) -- One morning in February, Japan’s government personnel department began an experiment in a nondescript building in a Tokyo residential area that could end up rewriting the rules of the nation’s powerful bureaucracy.
     For the first time, it invited 19 women from different ministries to an all-female training course designed to groom them for senior government positions. The four-day program inspired a 30-page blueprint, submitted to Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, on how to fix a system that keeps government staff at work till late at night, sacrificing family life.
     “We shared each other’s sufferings, fears about our future, guilt about putting the burden on colleagues” when we left on time to care for children, said Noriko Kawamura, 38, an assistant manager at the Health Ministry. “We began to realize that it was no good just grumbling ...
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12) Russians Skip Riviera Retreats as Sanctions Ground Private Jets
    (Bloomberg) -- For years, Nice Cote d’Azur airport received a steady stream of wealthy Russians touching down in corporate jets on their way to holiday homes on the French Riviera. As the Ukraine crisis deepens, that’s begun to change.
     European Union sanctions curbing travel for leading Russian business people and politicians have started to bite, causing private-aircraft flights from Moscow to Nice to drop 5 percent in the seven months through July, the first fall since 2009.
     “A lot of Russians bought property in the south of France, they love to come here,” said Umberto Vallino, head of business aviation development for Nice, Cannes and St. Tropez airports.
“This is the first year we’ve noticed a reduction in traffic.”
     More than 140 individuals and 50-60 companies are already subject to sanctions imposed by the EU and other authorities, according to law firm Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, which has a specialist aviation practice ...