(Bloomberg) -- The world’s biggest pension fund posted a record loss in the first three months of 2020 after the coronavirus pandemic sparked a global equity rout in the period.Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund lost 11%, or 17.7 trillion yen ($164.7 billion), in the three months ended March, it said in Tokyo on Friday. The decline in value was the steepest based on comparable data back to April 2008, reducing the fund’s total assets to 150.63 trillion yen. Foreign stocks were the worst performing investment, followed by domestic equities.The results come just months after the fund revamped top management and revised its asset allocation to focus more on overseas debt. The loss, which wiped out gains for the fiscal year, may attract political attention as social security remains a major concern for tens of millions of Japan’s retirees.“The decline in domestic and foreign equities led to a negative return for the...
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- U.S. President Donald Trump is furious at Germany for many reasons, not all of them fathomable. In phone conversations with Angela Merkel, he’s allegedly called the German chancellor “stupid” and denigrated her in “near-sadistic” tones. Though this be madness, as the Bard might say, there is — on rare occasions — method in it. One such case is Nord Stream 2.It is an almost-finished gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea between Russia and Germany, running right next to the original Nord Stream, which has been in operation since 2011. “We’re supposed to protect Germany from Russia, but Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars for energy coming from a pipeline,” Trump roared at a recent campaign rally. “Excuse me, how does that work?”As is his wont, the president thereby conflated many things. One of his grievances is that Germany has long been scrimping on its military spending, in effect free-riding on U.S. protection,...
Tencent Holdings, China's biggest social media and video game company, launched a new California-based studio this week, as it looks to further expand its presence overseas. The new studio, LightSpeed LA, will be led by former Rockstar veteran Steve Martin and will focus on the development and publishing of AAA titles, Tencent Games' LightSpeed and Quantum Studios said in a statement to Reuters. "We're ushering in a new era of game culture by combining world-class development with a stress-free work environment," Martin said in the statement....
(Bloomberg) -- The chaos that engulfed the gold market in March as the global pandemic choked off physical trading routes is rippling through other precious metals, resulting in price dislocations and a surge in exchange inventories for silver and platinum.The gold market was thrown into turmoil in March as lockdowns grounded planes and closed refineries, leading traders to worry they wouldn’t be able to get gold to New York in time to deliver against futures contracts. That caused futures, which typically trade close to the London spot price, to soar to a premium, inflicting losses on banks that struggled to close arbitrage bets and spurring them to shift some positions out of New York futures.There are signs that the dynamic isn’t limited to gold. Silver and platinum futures have traded at elevated levels relative to spot metals since early April. And as in the case of gold, the premiums are spurring...
