(Bloomberg) -- Oil pared last week’s gain as fears of a potential resurgence in global coronavirus cases countered tentative signs of a demand recovery.Futures fell 2.3% in New York to trade near $24 a barrel. China put Shulan, a city near the North Korean border, in lockdown over the weekend, while in the U.S., the White House was hit with a case of the virus even as President Donald Trump encouraged Americans to return to work. In India, data showed that consumption of oil products slumped 46% in April to a 12-year low.“Weakness persists,” said SEB chief commodities analyst Bjarne Schieldrop. With a new virus lockdown in China, it is “not so strange that crude-oil prices are giving back some of their strong gains from last week.”There are signs that gasoline demand is picking up as parts of the world reopen for business. And in China, an economy emerging gradually from...
Eric Schmidt, who had led Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and former entity Google Inc. since 2001 in executive roles, cut all ties with the company in February this year, according to a CNet report on Saturday.Schmidt was the chief executive officer of Google Inc. between 2001 and 2011, and later took the role of executive chairman. When Alphabet Inc. was created as a parent company of Google and other holdings in 2015, he took over as the new company's executive chairman, and later as a technology advisor in 2017.According to CNet, Schmidt stepped down as a technology advisor to Alphabet in February, marking an end to his 19-year old journey with the company.The executive's double-role as an advisor to the Pentagon and Alphabet at the same time came under criticism.Alphabet was competing with Amazom.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL), and International Business Machines...
Carnival Corp (CCL) is already enjoying a surge in cruise bookings, indicating that demand remains strong despite the coronavirus pandemic.After the company announced this week it would restart some cruises in August, Cruise Planners’ Carnival bookings spiked 600% compared to the previous 3 days before the news, reports TMZ.This represents a 200% increase over the same time period in 2019 – before the coronavirus pandemic even struck- points out TMZ, which spoke to Cruise Planners’, an American Express travel franchise.According to the travel company, customers are “not a bit concerned about traveling at this time” with many looking to have fun once restrictions ease.Carnival Cruise Line plans to resume its North American service from August 1 with a total of eight ships from Miami, Port Canaveral and Galveston.In connection with this plan, the pause in operations will be extended in all other North American and Australian markets through August 31, the company said.However...
(Bloomberg) -- The Covid-19 pandemic likely barely dented Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s growth, thanks to its dominance of online spheres from gaming to social media. Now that China’s industries are emerging from the worst of the outbreak, the bigger long-term threat may be the growing posse of challengers to its internet leadership.The WeChat operator is expected to unveil an 18% revenue rise when it reports earnings Wednesday, offering investors the earliest glimpse into how China Internet Inc. fared during a coronavirus-stricken first quarter. That’s down a tad from 20%-plus in prior quarters but still decent, thanks to its burgeoning cloud and finance services and a billion-plus entertainment-starved players confined to home. It’s why Tencent’s value has surged more than $49 billion since Covid-19 first broke out, defying a global market rout and a record Chinese economic contraction. It climbed about 4% Monday to its highest in more than two years.But once the...
May.11 -- Bitcoin slumped over the weekend after rising back above $10,000 late last week, casting a cloud over its latest attempted rebound. The decline took place ahead of a closely watched, technical event known as halving. Antoni Trenchev, co-founder at Nexobank, sees the currency reaching $50,000 by the end of the year. He speaks on "Bloomberg Markets: European Open."...
