Category Archives: Business

Cabinet papers 1998-99: Coalition’s campaign to unleash the GST laid bare

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Tax reform dominated debate, as ministers discussed East Timor and the 2000 Olympics – and resisted climate action

On 1 July Australia’s goods and services tax will have been in place for 20 years. It is uncontroversial in concept, with no major party advocating its abolition. Every so often there are calls for it to be increased from 10% or expanded – calls that are usually rebuffed.

But just how fraught the GST was to introduce is one of the key insights from the release of cabinet papers by the National Archives of Australia, covering the years 1998 and 1999. There were other concerns: East Timor’s independence, the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the failed republican referendum, and familiar resistance to doing anything but the minimum on climate change.

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Carlos Ghosn, ousted Nissan boss, says he has fled ‘Japanese injustice’

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Ghosn, who had been banned from leaving Japan, flies to Lebanon and says he will no longer be held in a rigged system

Carlos Ghosn, who is awaiting trial on charges of financial misconduct, has left Japan and arrived in Lebanon to “escape injustice”.

The former Nissan chairman issued a statement on Tuesday morning in which he said he would “no longer be held hostage by a rigged Japanese justice system where guilt is presumed”.

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Huawei says ‘survival is our first priority’ in 2020 as western boycott bites

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Chairman Eric Xu warns that hit from US sanctions means telecoms firm must ‘go all out’ to maintain sales

The embattled Chinese telecommunications company Huawei says “survival” is its first priority after announcing sales were hit hard by a boycott from western countries.

Eric Xu, the company’s chairman, said estimated sales revenue would reach 850bn yuan for 2019 (US$121bn) - up roughly 18% from the previous year, but much lower than initially expected.

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Hong Kong recession to continue as protests hit economy – business live

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Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

The pick-up in UK mortgage approvals in November is a “significant surprise”, says Howard Archer of the EY Item Club.

He suspects that some home owners may have been keen to move before the general election, as a hung parliament could have created more economic uncertainty in 2020.

Those gains in Hong Kong and China today have lifted Asian stock markets to their highest levels in 18 months today.

Global stock markets have gained another $700bn this week in thin trading on santa rally. All equities now worth $87.1tn, just $200bn shy of a fresh life-time high and equal to 100% of global GDP so stocks have entered bubble territory. pic.twitter.com/JgXmKPDWCN

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How Japan has fared in 30 years since the stock market bubble burst

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Nostalgia for the good times has been a coping mechanism for the world’s third largest economy

On 29 December 1989, Japan’s Nikkei stock market index hit a high of 38,916, a milestone that proved to be the last hurrah of the country’s asset-inflated bubble economy – a period of ostentatious consumption and overconfidence in the infallibility of Japan, Inc.

What followed was a spectacular fall from the heights of the mid- to late 1980s. The stock market plummeted, losing more than $2tn (£1.5tn) in value by December 1990. In the years that followed, the Japanese surveyed an alien landscape of “restructuring” – code for cost-cutting – deflation and stagnation. When the bubble party ended, its hosts appeared to have no idea how to clean up the mess left by absurdly high share and property prices.

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What happened? The policies Scott Morrison’s government appears to have abandoned

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Action to protect LGBT students, a payday lending crackdown and an integrity commission are among the Coalition’s lost causes

Governments should be judged not just on what they do with their time in office but also on what they don’t do.

There are only so many hours in a day, and so many parliamentary sitting weeks in a year (there were just 10 since the May election). Nevertheless it’s important to know not just what the top priorities are but also what’s been pushed to the backburner.

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Domino’s Pizza UK finance boss drowns on holiday in Mauritius

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David Bauernfeind, 51, died in snorkelling accident on Boxing Day, company says

The UK finance director of Domino’s Pizza has drowned while on holiday with his family in Mauritius.

The company said David Bauernfeind, 51, died in a snorkelling accident on the Indian Ocean island on Boxing Day.

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Easing trade tensions fuel pre-Christmas shares rally

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Donald Trump promises that a US-China trade pact will be signed ‘very shortly’

A pre-Christmas rally fuelled by hopes of waning trade tensions have pushed share prices to a fresh high and on course for their biggest rise in a decade.

Donald Trump’s promise that a US-China trade pact would be signed “very shortly” sent the MSCI gauge of stock markets around the world to new record levels.

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Tesco withdraws Christmas cards from sale after forced labour claims

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Supermarket halts production in China after six-year-old girl finds plea for help inside card

Tesco says it has suspended production at a factory in China alleged to have forced foreign prisoners to help make charity Christmas cards and also withdrawn them from sale.

The allegations came to light after the Sunday Times reported that Florence Widdicombe, aged six, from Tooting, south London, opened a box of charity Christmas cards from the supermarket and discovered a plea for help inside one of them.

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‘Handing control away’: UK’s sale of Cobham defence firm to US company decried

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Founding family criticises approval of £4bn deal despite national security concerns

The government has been accused of handing control away after it approved a US private equity firm’s £4bn takeover of the UK defence company Cobham despite national security concerns.

The deal had been delayed since mid-2019 after fears were raised that Advent International’s acquisition could undermine the country’s security.

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Boeing Starliner space capsule goes off course on first test flight

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Officials say spacecraft is in stable orbit but problem may delay mission to carry Nasa astronauts

Boeing’s new Starliner capsule ran into trouble and went off course in orbit minutes after blasting off on Friday on its first test flight, a crucial dress rehearsal for next year’s inaugural launch with astronauts.

Initially everything went flawlessly as the Atlas V rocket launched with the Starliner shortly before sunrise. But half an hour into the flight, Boeing reported that the capsule had not got into the position needed to get to the International Space Station.

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Former France Télécom bosses given jail terms over workplace bullying

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Court told of psychological abuse of staff as bosses focused on cost savings and job cuts

Former executives at France Télécom have been given prison sentences and fines after being found guilty of “institutional harassment” and creating a culture of routine workplace bullying that sparked a number of suicides at the company.

The landmark ruling is likely to send shockwaves through the French business world. It is the first time managers have been held criminally responsible for implementing a general strategy of bullying even if they had not dealt directly with the staff involved.

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British Airways slumps to near bottom in passenger survey

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Which? finds BA ranks badly for both long and short haul, but Ryanair still props up table

British Airways has taken a nosedive in UK passengers’ opinions and is now rated just above Ryanair at the bottom end of the airline rankings.

The flag carrier was among the worst rated for food, seat comfort and value for money on both short and long-haul services in the annual Which? poll.

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US teens may be barred from buying vape pens and cigarettes

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Anti-smoking advocates say industry support for legislation is a calculated effort to head off even harder-hitting restrictions

Congress is moving to pass the biggest new sales restrictions on tobacco products in more than a decade, with support from two unlikely backers: the Marlboro cigarette maker, Altria, and the vaping giant Juul.

The legislation would raise the minimum age to purchase all tobacco products, including electronic cigarettes, from 18 to 21 nationwide, a step long sought by health advocates. But in the past year Juul and Altria have emerged as the biggest supporters of the measure, blanketing Capitol Hill with lobbyists and advertisements touting their support for the “Tobacco 21” law.

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Every McDonald’s in Peru closes amid protests at death of two workers

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Chain to close all its restaurants for two days of mourning after deaths lead to protests over workplace safety

The death by electrocution of two young employees at a McDonald’s restaurant in Lima has spurred protests and stoked anger over working conditions in the wider economy, which are viewed as exploitative and sometimes dangerous.

Peru’s public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into the deaths of Alexandra Porras, 19, and her former boyfriend Gabriel Campos, 18, who were reported to have died in the early hours of Sunday while cleaning the kitchen at the fast-food outlet.

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Purdue payments to Sackler family surged after OxyContin fine

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Family started taking far more money out of firm after it was fined for misleading marketing of drug

The wealthy owners of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma started taking far more money out of the company after it was fined for misleading marketing of the powerful prescription painkiller.

Purdue made payments for the benefit of members of the Sackler family totalling $10.7bn (£8bn) from 2008 through to 2017, a court filing made by the company on Monday evening shows.

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Converting coal plants to biomass could fuel climate crisis, scientists warn

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Experts horrified at large-scale forest removal to meet wood pellet demand

Plans to shift Europe’s coal plants, including the giant Drax complex in North Yorkshire, to burn wood pellets instead could accelerate rather than combat climate crisis and lay waste to forests equal to half the size of Germany’s Black Forest per year, according to campaigners.

Climate thinktank Sandbag said the heavily subsidised plans to cut carbon emissions will result in a “staggering” amount of tree cutting, potentially destroying forests faster than they can regrow.

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Goldman Sachs to stop financing new drilling for oil in the Arctic

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US bank becomes the first to establish a no-go zone in the oil and gas sector

Goldman Sachs has ruled out future financing of oil drilling or exploration in the Arctic and said it would not invest in new thermal coal mines anywhere in the world.

The new environmental policy, which was released by the US bank on Sunday, was praised by environmentalists, though many warned that it was only a first step.

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Military police remove climate protesters from Schiphol airport

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Hundreds of demonstrators call for international hub in Amsterdam to curb emissions

Dutch military police have begun forcibly removing a group of climate protesters at Schiphol airport, in Amsterdam, after they refused to leave during a demonstration organised by Greenpeace.

Hundreds of protesters attended the demonstration on Saturday calling on the international air hub to adopt a plan to curb greenhouse emissions. The group had been allowed to protest outside the building only, but they broke that restriction, arguing that citizens’ rights to peaceful protest should not be restricted.

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China confirms ‘phase one’ trade deal with US

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  • Beijing says deal includes rollback of tariffs in phases
  • Trump hails ‘amazing deal for all’

China and the US have reached an initial deal to resolve a bruising trade war between the two countries, according to statements from both sides.

China’s vice-commerce minister Wang Shouwen said in a late night briefing on Friday that the US had agreed to cancel some of its existing tariffs on Chinese goods, while Donald Trump tweeted that the two countries had agreed to a “very large Phase One Deal”.

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