Jack Dorsey’s Square posts $379m revenue for first quarter as losses narrow May 5, 2016 Payment processing firm Square, started by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, has reported revenue of $379m (£262m), a 51 per cent increase year-on-year, beating analysts' expectations. Analysts had been expecting the company to report $344m in revenue. The mobile payment firm reported sales of $374.4m in the previous quarter. Transaction revenue was $300m, while Starbucks transaction revenue was the next [...]
Prepare for disintegration: How new technology and the euro-crisis legacy could break the EU apart May 5, 2016 Somewhat lost in the current debate over the UK and the EU is the fate of the European Union itself. Are we arguing over the membership of a club which might not exist 10 or 20 years from now? The pre-eminent American historian of the EU, John Gillingham, has written: “The EU is unfit for [...]
Weight Watchers share price rises by 12.57 per cent as it surpasses expectations in the first quarter May 4, 2016 Weight Watchers shares have soared by over 14 per cent in after hours trading, after the company’s results for the first quarter came in ahead of expectations. Net revenue declined by 4.7 per cent, from $322m (£222m) in the first quarter of 2015, to $307m. The company posted a loss of $0.17 per share, compared [...]
The world’s top universities by reputation revealed – how many of them are in the UK? May 4, 2016 Some of the UK’s most prestigious institutions have slipped in a ranking of the world’s top 100 universities by reputation. The latest Times Higher Education rankings have shown that Cambridge and Oxford have been pushed into fourth and fifth place by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, which came second and third on [...]
TripAdvisor shares tank after it misses expectations May 4, 2016 Travel website TripAdvisor’s revenue has decreased to $352m, a drop of $11m or three per cent, during the first quarter of 2016. TripAdvisor reported earnings per share of $0.32 in the first quarter, $0.14 less than the analyst estimate of $0.46. Shares of the travel business fell 7.73 per cent to $58.25 in after-hours trading on Wednesday. [...]
Kraft Heinz sales jumped 165 per cent in the first quarter – due to the merger May 4, 2016 Kraft Heinz has revealed a massive jump in sales during the three months to 3 April, driving the group's share price up by over five per cent in after hours trading. The company, which was formed out of the merger of Kraft and Heinz last year, said a 165 per cent increase in sales – [...]
Are emerging markets getting their mojo back? May 4, 2016 Emerging markets may be getting some of their mojo back after a tough couple of years. So says Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM), citing a rally in emerging market bonds. Yacov Arnopolin, a portfolio manager for the GSAM emerging markets debt team, is encouraged that the recent interest in emerging markets has been broad-based and [...]
Just what has the EU got against e-cigs? May 3, 2016 The e-cig is one of the great success stories of our time. For decades, public health officials have worried about the effects of tobacco smoking, and market-driven innovation has ridden to the rescue. What a triumph the e-cig, or vaping, could prove to be. Public Health England concluded last year that these little devices are 95 [...]
The problem with Ukraine and Iraq isn’t Putin and Islamic State: It’s that both countries are basket cases May 3, 2016 “The gods help them that help themselves.” – Aesop When it comes to the seemingly intractable crises in both Ukraine and Iraq, a comforting, if wholly untrue, narrative has taken hold. The chaos that has laid low these two plucky, overmatched, but deserving states is entirely the fault of the world’s two most obvious Bond [...]
Draghi lashes out at hawks and defends low interest rates in Europe during Asian Development Bank speech May 2, 2016 The president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, lashed out at hawks today and argued there is no current alternative for low interest rates. In a speech given to the Asian Development Bank, Draghi acknowledged that low interest rates are not harmless, as they put pressure on the business model of financial institutions by squeezing [...]