Eurozone Industrial Production Bounces Back In September | ||
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Industrial production in the eurozone rose by 0.6% between August and September of this year, according to figures released by eurostat on Wednesday. This is slightly lower than the 0.7% month-over-month increase economics were expecting. The 0.6% rise in September is due to capital good production rising by 2.9% and energy by 0.3%. Meanwhile, durable consumer goods fell by 2.6%., eurostat said. Industrial production increased by 0.6% year-over-year in September. Take a look at the chart:
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The Bank Of England Is Slamming The Brakes On A Rate Hike: Here's What You Need To Know | ||
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The Bank of England's latest Inflation Report is just out: it's the quarterly summary used to sum up the Bank's outlook, and offers some juicy hints about when the Bank of England will hike rates after nearly six years. The overall message is that it looks like rates will rise later and more slowly, and the Bank doesn't seem unhappy about that. Inflation's expected to stay below 2% for three years but the extra stimulus of low rates means growth should be pretty decent. Here are the big points from the report:
Governor Mark Carney is speaking live at a press conference now. Inflation is "more likely than not" to float below 1%, just half of the Bank's target, early next year. Bank of England governor Mark Carney would then have to write a letter to chancellor George Osborne explaining why inflation came so far off target. The Bank's noting that though strong growth is expected, "pessimism about the global economy has increased" and the situation in the euro area is looking pretty bleak. The report goes on to say that the growth outlook for Europe has worsened, with "the factors depressing growth likely to outweigh the potential positive impact of ECB policy action." The Bank expected 1% growth this year and 1.75% growth next year for the currency union, but it now expects just 0.75% and 1.25%. The basic message here is that raising rates is going to have to wait, but that growth won't actually be much changed for the UK: those extra months and potentially years of low rates should keep the UK economy expanding at a pretty healthy pace. They're still expecting unemployment to drop, productivity to bounce back and business investment to be pretty strong in the years ahead. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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10 Things In Advertising You Need To Know Today | ||
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Good morning. Here's everything you need to know in the world of advertising today. 1. Yahoo has confirmed it is acquiring video ad tech company Brightroll for $640 million. Here’s what some industry insiders think of the deal — in short, they believe Yahoo has probably overpaid. 2. Pinterest revealed earlier this week its big plan to give you what you want before you know you want it. Pinterest wants to be the resource that users rely on when they’ve only got the faintest glimmer of an idea, as opposed to sites like Google where they search for specific things. 3. Alibaba sold a record $9.3 billion worth of goods during its annual Singles Day sales event Tuesday. Xiaomi, Uniqlo and Huawei were among the top-selling brands during the 24-hour festival. 4. Adweek asks whether brands are afraid of sharing their data with Facebook. The social network is on a “charm offensive” to get advertisers’ assurance on products like its new ad server Atlas and Custom Audiences, the report says. 5. The UK’s third biggest supermarket, Sainsbury’s, has announced it will invest £150 million ($238 million) in price cuts as it looks to become more competitive with the increasingly popular discount retailers, The Financial Times reports. The investment will be funded by cost savings and lower investments elsewhere in areas such as property. 6. Nestle has apologized after joking in a tweet that 43 abducted Mexican students thought to be dead had been “crunched.” A spokesman for the Crunch brand said the tweet was “unauthorized” and that the company had launched an investigation to find out who had sent it. 7. Chief financial officers think marketers are “fluffy and weak,” according to new research from Marketing Week and Econsultancy. The study reveals an “alarming” divide between finance chief and marketers, with return on investment (or the lack of it) a particular sticking point. 8. Google is looking to fight online advertising fraud with a new feature in its DoubleClick bid manager that automatically prevents advertisers buying “hidden” ad slots, the company announced in a press release. Hidden ads occur when fraudsters create sites and stack multiple ads into a single ad slot where only the top ad is visible, adjust the styling of a page to make ads completely invisible, or create a very small iFrame to serve ads into that are impossible for users to see. 9. Wireless carrier Vodafone has borrowed the children’s mega hit tune “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen for its UK Christmas commercial, Campaign reports. The ad features hospital staff, chefs, farmers and its employees singing along to the song — a spot that will no doubt drive parents mad (just as they thought their kids had got over it.) 10. Unilever is holding a global creative pitch for its Axe brand, The Drum reports. However, the CPG giant says BBH — which has held the account since 1995 — will still remain its lead agency. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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UK Unemployment Holds Steady At 6% | ||
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The UK unemployment rate held steady at 6% in September, but remains sharply down over the year.
Pay was also up with pay including bonuses for employees in the UK 1.0% higher than a year earlier. Pay excluding bonuses for employees in the UK was 1.3% higher than a year earlier. With inflation at 1.2% in September this means UK workers finally saw some real wage growth with regular pay rising faster than prices for the first time in 5 years but overall pay growth remains low relative to the pre-crisis trend.
Gains in employment are now being driven by increases in full-time work with the number of people working full-time increasing by 589,000 compared to a year earlier (a 2.7% rise), while the number of part-time workers rose by 105,000. This reverses the trend seen in the early stages of the recovery with the UK seeing sharp increases in part-time and self employment. There was also a reminder that while the US and the UK have seen sharp drops in unemployment since the worst of the crisis, Europe is still languishing a long way behind.
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Look At The Ludicrous Chat Transcripts Between Traders In Massive Manipulation Probe | ||
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Five major banks including UBS, the Royal Bank of Scotland, JP Morgan, HSBC, and Citibank, just got slammed with $3.4 billion in fined by global regulators, following a lengthy probe over accusations that traders had tried to manipulate currency markets. Authorities in Switzerland, the UK, and, the US were all part of the probe, which resulted in the biggest set of charges ever levied by British financial regulators. Britain's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) explains that in a 5-year-period between January 2008 and October 2013, "ineffective controls at the Banks allowed G10 spot FX traders to put their Banks’ interests ahead of those of their clients, other market participants and the wider UK financial system." The FCA continued: "These failings allowed traders at those Banks to behave unacceptably. They shared information about clients’ activities which they had been trusted to keep confidential and attempted to manipulate G10 spot FX currency rates, including in collusion with traders at other firms, in a way that could disadvantage those clientsand the market." Such examples of "unacceptable banker behaviour" are captured in chat transcripts released by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission as part of their investigation. You can take a look at them here. In one instance of misconduct below, three traders from Citibank, JPMorgan, and UBS, discuss whether or not to invites a fourth trader ino their private chat room because they aren't sure if they can trust him. At one point, Bank Y tells Bank Z (who presumably knows the fourth trader) that he trusts Bank Z's judgement.
All of the listed banks co-operated with the investigation. According to the FCA, the fines would have been 30% higher if the banks listed hadn't co-operated with the probe. An investigation into Barclays, one of the large banks notably not mentioned in the list, is still ongoing. The investigation has resulted in the largest charges ever levied by British financial regulators. Here are how the charges break down:
For each bank, this is the combined charge from the three regulators, according to Bloomberg.
These banks and plenty of others have been reporting that they've set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to prepare for these charges, which have been a long time coming. Jakub Lichwa at Daiwa Capital Markets warns that it's not all over yet in a note this morning: "In addition, we note that there are 2 further agencies – the US Securities Commission and the Federal Reserve – which have still not announced settlements and therefore the ultimate extent of losses of this FX probe could well be higher depending on the outcome of these investigations." RBS is the first bank to report that it's reviewing the conduct of some staffers still at the bank: it's got 50 former and current employees under investigation. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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