ROUND-UP
FT markets round-up: "A big day for central bank announcements saw equity markets take divergent paths and the yen tumble against the dollar and the euro, as the markets weighed up the outlook for global monetary policy. The Bank of Japan grabbed the headlines as it exceeded market expectations with the scale and pace of expansion to its asset purchase programme. The BoJ's moves helped push Japanese equities sharply higher, with the Nikkei 225 Average jumping 2.2 per cent. The dollar, meanwhile, rose 3.4 per cent against the yen, and the euro gained more than 4 per cent against the Japanese currency." (Financial Times)
MF Global report blames Corzine: "Jon Corzine helped bring down MF Global with a dangerous trading strategy and inadequate risk controls, according to the court-appointed trustee to the collapsed brokerage's bankruptcy. Mr Corzine, the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs who ran MF Global from March 2010 to its failure in October 2011, embarked on a "risky business strategy" of betting on European government debt and ignored "glaring deficiencies" in controls, found Louis Freeh, the trustee." (Financial Times)
BP in key hearing on gulf spill oil costs: "Businesses in the Gulf of Mexico region are not short of advice on what to do about the settlement that BP signed last year with plaintiffs' lawyers to resolve damages claims over the 2010 oil spill. "It is possible to have suffered defined damages, even without a decrease in net income!" says one law firm's website." (Financial Times)
Apple devices predicted to beat Windows: "Consumers will buy more Apple devices than PCs, tablets and smartphones running Windows for the first time this year, analysts predict, underlining the urgency of the threat to Microsoft's platform dominance in the shift from desktop to mobile. Gartner, the market research group, forecast in a report released on Thursday that sales of tablets would overtake traditional desktops and laptops by 2015, while other analysts have predicted the shift could come even sooner." (Financial Times)
FURTHER FURTHER READING
- BOJ follows the Fed, on steroids.
- How bad is the job market for college grads?
- Politics and personalities at the world's central banks.
- How the cell phone was finally invented.
- Interest rates: the bottleneck
