Strategy Financial News

LONDON — Burberry shares plunged 9% on Thursday after the British luxury fashion retailer warned that full-year operating profit will come in at the low end of forecasts amid a global slowdown in luxury spending.

Panelists Art Laffer and Scott Redler provide insight on economic growth on 'The Claman Countdown.'

VP Nandakumar, MD & CEO, Manappuram Finance, says “along with our gold loan portfolio, we are growing our secured MSME, commercial vehicles portfolios because we have a very large customer base both in Manappuram and the subsidiaries. In these secured segments, our penetration compared to our potential has come to only one-fifth.” Manappuram Finance gold loan AUMs have seen an 8% growth in Q2. You have maintained that you are going to be maintaining the pricing discipline as well. How is this strategy going to fare with regards to growth, given the competition in gold loans now? We expect gold loan AUM to grow around 10% annually and we expect that to grow because the coming quarters are usually better for gold loans. More importantly, we have other secured portfolios. We are growing those portfolios along with our gold loan portfolio like secured MSME, commercial vehicles etc. because we have a very large customer base both in Manappuram and the subsidiaries. In these secured segments like commercial vehicles as well as secured MSME, our penetration compared to our potential has come to only one-fifth. We have that opportunity along with gold. In gold, we expect that in the coming quarters, we will have targeted annual growth of around 10%.

By Paul Sandle

Israel-Hamas war LIVE updates The Israeli army soldier entered the MRI centre of the Shifa hospital in Gaza. "A few of the thing that we found, totally confirms, without any doubt that Hamas systematically uses hospitals in their military operations in violation of the international law". “These weapons have absolutely no business being inside a hospital," the military spokesman, said in the video, adding that he believed the material was “just the top of the iceberg." The military said the search was continuing, but it did not immediately show any sign of tunnels or an extensive military center.

Beef giant AACo, rocked by internal safety reports claiming some staff showed an “alpha” bullying culture and made homophobic slurs, has maintained it runs a “respectful workplace”.

Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue says it is expanding into asset management, part of the iron ore and energy group’s strategy to fund green investments.

GrainCorp has unveiled a $50 million share buyback and declared a special dividend in a sign of confidence the business can withstand adverse weather conditions expected to affect Australian farmers.

A proposed ban on noncompete agreements has come under a fierce attack by business groups in New York

gains for the S&P 500 Index in 2024, say strategists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., becoming the latest Wall Street bank to come out with a bullish call. The team, led by David Kostin, joins others who have turned more positive about the outlook for equities, like Morgan Stanley's Michael Wilson. Meanwhile, Bank of America Corp.'s Michael Hartnett has said investors have moved to overweight positions in stocks and bonds. Kostin's expectations are still moderate: he sees the US benchmark ending next year at 4,700 points, nearly 5% above its current level, but a slower advance than this year's 17% rally so far. A supportive mix of factors awaits US stocks, with the economy set to avoid a recession, earnings rising and valuations remaining steady, the Goldman team wrote in a note Wednesday.

PayU is in the process of setting up business-to-business payment rails for its Indian clients. Additionally, the company is evaluating opportunities in the supply chain financing space. “B2B payments is something that we are thinking very hard about … the idea is to expand into vendor payments and (look at) the different ways in which we can manage the suppliers of these anchor merchants, solve their reconciliation problems,” said Vijay Agicha, PayU’s global head of strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and investment.

Manulife Investment Management is buying most of billionaire Michael Hintze’s CQS in a bid to expand the Canadian investment firm’s specialized fixed-income investment strategies.

Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher says the “shrill voices” of climate activists and politicians in affluent electorates will cost the country jobs and ultimately reduce living standards of average Australians if they succeed in blocking new gas projects.

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) found himself in the hot seat during a recent court proceeding regarding the exchange's risk management measures. The hearing, documented by BitMEX Research, shed light on a catastrophic event stemming from a flawed risk engine in 2020, the subsequent code change titled «Allow Negative,» and its implications on FTX's operations.

In light of the increasing number of cryptocurrency scams permeating social media platforms, blockchain security company CertiK has delineated a comprehensive examination of this menacing trend. On October 26, 2023, CertiK took to Twitter to elucidate how the meld of social media's extensive reach and cryptocurrency's decentralized, and often murky, nature concocts a fertile ground for scam artists.

Bethesda-based financial giant, ProShares, has once again taken a pioneering step in the crypto-linked ETF domain with the launch of the world’s first short ether-linked ETF, named ProShares Short Ether Strategy ETF (SETH), according to BusinessWire. This innovative ETF is engineered to give investors a lucrative avenue on days when Ether’s value descends. The announcement came on November 2, 2023, further solidifying ProShares' standing as a trailblazer in the crypto-linked ETF landscape.

NEW DELHI : Foreign airlines have always seen India as a market that feeds their hubs, but that seems to be changing with key foreign carriers from Asia Pacific seeing India becoming an aviation hub, which can be used to connect Africa and the Middle East from their part of the world. Senior executives from Japan Airlines and Thai Airways said they see the potential of India becoming a hub but it may take some time for this to become a reality.

NEW DELHI : The Centre is prepared with a plan to ensure food security over the coming year, in the wake of an erratic monsoon that disrupted the crop calendar and boosted food prices this year. According to Union consumer affairs secretary Rohit Kumar Singh, this will include sourcing pulses from a variety of countries, intervening quickly and directly in retail markets, and possible export-import related steps, depending on the situation. As part of the plan, the government is working to create a model to predict food prices that will factor in externalities like weather and trade-related measures, Singh said in an interview.

NEW DELHI : India’s largest packaged consumer goods company Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) is pushing personalized messages and promotions on its business-to-business app Shikhar to drive engagement for small store owners amid greater competition from online platforms. Shikhar is the company’s business-to-business app that allows millions of shopkeepers to place orders directly with its distributors any time. In FY23—1.2 million retail outlets used the Shikhar app to place orders.

LPL Financial Wednesday announced the launch of LPL Private Wealth Management, an affiliation program for advisors catering to high-net-worth clients.

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a duo of custom-designed computing chips, joining other big tech firms that — faced with the high cost of delivering artificial intelligence services — are bringing key technologies in-house. Microsoft said it does not plan to sell the chips but instead will use them to power its own subscription software offerings and as part of its Azure cloud computing service.