Year: 2019

Roche entered into a $1.15 billion licensing agreement with Sarepta Therapeutics to obtain the right to launch and commercialize Sarepta’s investigational gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) outside the United States. Roche will make an upfront payment of $750 million in cash and $400 million worth in equity at closing for Sarepta’s investigational micro-dystrophin gene therapy SRP-9001 that is currently in clinical development, the Swiss drugmaker said in a statement on Monday. …read more […]

NAIROBI/ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Days after the March 10 crash of a Kenya-bound Ethiopian Airlines’ Boeing jet that killed all 157 people on board, strangers began calling or visiting bereaved families, saying they represented U.S. law firms. Reuters interviewed 37 relatives of the victims, or their representatives, and found that 31 complained of inappropriate approaches by those saying they represented U.S. law firms. In some instances, the behavior may have been illegal or unethical under U.S. laws and rules barring solicitation and deceptive practices, several legal ethics experts said. …read more […]

The repo market came under stress in September as demand for funds to settle Treasury purchases and pay corporate taxes overwhelmed loans available. Interest rates in U.S. money markets shot up to as high as 10% for some overnight loans, more than four times the Fed’s rate. It is the Fed’s first major market intervention since the financial crisis more than a decade ago. …read more […]

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – U.S. asset manager BlackRock Inc, Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings (Pte) Ltd and China Construction Bank Corp (CCB) have agreed to set up a wealth management joint venture in China, said people with direct knowledge of the matter. A memorandum of understanding has been announced internally within BlackRock and CCB , according to the people and an internal notice seen by Reuters. The deal comes as China’s government continues to open up its financial industry to foreign firms. …read more […]

(Bloomberg Opinion) — It seems like Motorola has invented a 2019 version of the Flux Capacitor. That fictitious device from “Back to the Future” made time travel possible. Now, the phone division of Lenovo Group Ltd. has to overcome the same kinds of struggles faced by the vintage film’s DeLorean-driving scientist.Rather than racing to meet a lightning bolt, Motorola is rushing to make enough retro-inspired Razr flip phones to handle demand. Motorola unveiled the updated version of the classic 2005 handset in November, replacing the keypad with a foldable touchscreen and running the Android operating system. That flexible display pits …read more […]

Experts see the stock market rising during the final days of 2019 and into early next year — an event known as the Santa Claus rally. …read more […]

Dec.22 — Thomas Hugger, chief executive officer and founder of Asia Frontier Capital Ltd., talks about the opportunities he sees in markets including Bangladesh and Kazakhstan. He speaks with Juliette Saly and Rishaad Salamat on “Bloomberg Markets: Asia.” …read more […]

Dec.22 — Prime Minister Narendra Modi has staunchly defended India’s contentious new religion-based citizenship law in an address to a mass rally in the capital New Delhi, while elsewhere in the country the death toll from violent protests against the legislation crept higher. Bloomberg’s Archana Chaudhary reports on “Bloomberg Markets: Asia.” …read more […]

Dec.22 — Alex Wolf, head of Asia investment strategy at JPMorgan Private Bank, talks about the dollar, U.S. and European stocks. He speaks with Rishaad Salamat and Juliette Saly on “Bloomberg Markets: Asia.” …read more […]

(Bloomberg) — U.S. stocks face a greater-than-usual risk of a sell-off next year, with investors overconfident in an economic resurgence, according to Vanguard Group Inc.’s investment-strategy chief.“Financial markets run the risk of getting ahead of themselves,” Joseph Davis, who also serves as Vanguard’s chief economist, said in an interview Friday. He sees 50% odds on a correction in 2020, against what he terms a more typical figure of about 30%.A correction is often defined as a 10% drop, and the S&P 500 Index hasn’t seen one since December 2018, when it came a hair’s breadth from entering a bear market …read more […]