Sat, Jul 14, 2018 page10

• World Business Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  AUTOMAKERS

  Rivals closing in on Tesla

  Daimler AG, BMW AG and Volkswagen AG are closing in and might pass Tesla Inc in the electric automaking industry, based on a ranking that factors strategy, battery technology, culture, supplier networks, partnerships and financial performance into an overall score. Tesla should remain No. 1 next year, according to the forecast by PA Consulting Group, but by 2021, Tesla will fall to seventh place, it said. By then, Daimler would be in the lead, followed by BMW, the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi alliance and VW. Production issues with the Model 3 and an uncertain profit outlook were factors in the lower ranking for Tesla, PA Consulting said.

  MACROECONOMICS

  Singapore growth slows

  Singapore’s economy expanded at a slower pace than forecast in the second quarter, clouding the outlook for the export-reliant city state at a time when global trade risks are rising. GDP rose at a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 1 percent from the prior three months, according to preliminary data from the Singaporean Ministry of Trade and Industry yesterday. The performance is weakest since a contraction in the first quarter of last year, data showed. GDP expanded 3.8 percent from a year earlier, compared with a median estimate of 4.1 percent, the ministry said.

  MACROECONOMICS

  Powell warns on tariffs

  US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell gave an upbeat assessment of the US economy, but said that a sustained period of high tariffs on a wide variety of imports could be harmful to growth. “The economy’s in a really good place,” Powell said on Thursday in an interview on American Public Media’s Marketplace program, adding that unemployment was at its lowest level in 20 years, while acknowledging the risk posed by escalating trade disputes. Should those disputes result in “high tariffs on a lot of products and a lot of traded goods and services” that “could be a negative for our economy,” he said. Powell added that inflation has gradually moved up.

  EUROZONE

  Bulgaria closer to joining

  Bulgaria, the EU’s poorest country, on Thursday moved a step closer to joining the euro. After a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels, the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) said an evaluation could be completed in about a year. “The European Commission welcomes Bulgaria’s efforts to join the eurozone,” European Commission Vice President for the Euro and Social Dialogue Valdis Dombrovskis said. “We might expect the ECB to complete its overall assessment in around a year,” members of the eurozone added in a statement.

  FINANCE

  Moryoussef guilty of rigging

  Former Barclays PLC trader Philippe Moryoussef was in his native France when a London jury found him guilty of a conspiracy to rig an interest-rate benchmark that influences trillions of dollars of pensions and mortgages. He had left London days before the trial began in April. The jury took four days to find Moryoussef guilty, bringing seven years of investigations toward an end. He became the seventh person to be found guilty of interest-rate manipulation in the UK. Barclays was among banks that paid about US$9 billion in fines. Still, the UK Serious Fraud Office cannot be sure Moryoussef will ever end up in prison.
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