Author: LoveWorld UK

U.S. President Donald Trump has issued an executive order banning U.S. transactions involving Chinese social media and video game leader Tencent Holdings Ltd (0700.HK), owner of messaging app WeChat, on national security grounds. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is set to identify transactions covered by the order, which starts in 45 days. Below is a list of some of Tencent’s biggest U.S. and international investments: UNITED STATES *Tesla Inc (TSLA.O): Tencent bought 5% of the electric vehicle maker for $1.78 billion (1.36 billion pounds) in 2017. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has called Tencent “an investor and adviser to Tesla”.…

Britain’s future access to European Union financial markets is looking increasingly patchy, as Brussels tries to limit the activities which can be carried out from London, prompting more business and jobs to cross the channel. The City of London’s unfettered access to its biggest customer – worth around 26 billion pounds ($34 billion) annually – ends on Dec. 31 when Brexit transition arrangements expire. While London is expected to remain Europe’s biggest financial centre with trillion-dollar foreign exchange trading and derivatives clearing staying put for now, recent moves by the EU to limit other trading activities to within the bloc…

Britain will set out proposals on Thursday to speed up homebuilding by cutting red tape and opening up the sector to smaller firms, in a bid to address a long-term housing shortage. Successive Conservative-led governments have sought to reform the housing market by increasing supply, conscious of a generation of younger renters who have been priced out of owning their own homes in many parts of the country. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has set its sights on reforming the planning system to try to get more homes built. “Our complex planning system has been a barrier to building the…

Chinese-owned video app TikTok, facing the threat of a U.S. ban, said on Thursday it will set up its first European data centre in Ireland, extending its presence in the country where it already has a hub dealing with regional regulatory issues. The move comes days after parent company ByteDance said it was considering moving TikTok’s headquarters overseas, following a British media report that the unit could relocate to London. TikTok’s 420 million euro ($499 million) investment in Ireland comes at a fraught time in relations between China and the West, with disagreements on a range of issues from trade…

The Bank of England said on Thursday that Britain’s economy would probably take longer to get back to its pre-pandemic size than it previously thought, even if the scale of the hit this year might not be quite as bad. The British central bank also warned of possible risks if it were to take interest rates below zero. As it announced unanimous votes by its policymakers to make no changes to its key interest rate, which stands at just 0.1%, nor its huge bond-buying programme, the BoE said the economy would not recover its pre-pandemic size until the end of…

Britain’s construction industry grew at the fastest rate in almost five years in July as business picked up after COVID-related shutdowns, survey data showed on Thursday, mirroring a rapid rebound in manufacturing and parts of the services sector. However, the sector has a long way to go before output returns to pre-COVID levels, and construction firms are still shedding jobs at one the fastest rates since the global financial crisis. The IHS Markit/CIPS construction Purchasing Managers’ Index rose to 58.1 in July from 55.3 in June – slightly above economists’ forecasts in a Reuters poll and a sharp rebound from…

Facebook Inc (FB.O) on Wednesday took down a post by U.S. President Donald Trump, which the company said violated its rules against sharing misinformation about the coronavirus. The post contained a video clip, from an interview with Fox & Friends earlier in the day, in which Trump claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19. “This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19, which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation,” a Facebook spokesman said. A tweet containing the video that was posted by the Trump campaign’s @TeamTrump account and shared…

Advanced driver assistance technology that automates steering and braking in a growing number of vehicles is not providing reliable safety benefits, a new study by the American Automobile Association showed on Thursday. Researchers at AAA, a federation of North American motor clubs, found that the systems recorded disruptions and disengaged roughly every eight miles, encountering situations they were not equipped to handle. That creates dangerous situations if drivers rely too much on the technology and stop paying attention to the road, the AAA researchers said, adding that the systems are “far from 100% reliable.” “AAA has repeatedly found that active…

London-listed shares jumped on Wednesday as record gold prices powered miners of the commodity, while insurer Hastings Group soared after agreeing to a $2.2 billion buyout offer. A 17.8% surge for the motor insurer (HSTG.L) drove the FTSE 250 .FTMC up 1%. Almost all the mid-cap sub-indexes were trading higher, led by industrials, consumer discretionary and materials stocks. The export-laden FTSE 100 .FTSE also gained 1%, with investors watching signs of progress in a U.S. fiscal relief bill. White House negotiators have vowed to work “around the clock” to reach a spending deal by the end of the week. “There is optimism that we’ll…

South Africa’s diamond industry, famed for sales the world over and supplying gems for the British crown jewels, is looking closer to home to revive its fortunes following the coronavirus slump. Even before the new virus triggered the COVID-19 pandemic, diamond prices and demand were weak. Global economic weakness has exaggerated that and Anglo American’s (AAL.L) De Beers unit last week reported a plunge in earnings. Some of the many small players who polish the rough diamonds that De Beers and other miners unearth say they have been pleasantly surprised by the extent of lockdown jewellery-buying as enforced proximity kindled…