By Alec Hogg
In today’s global business headlines:
- Reports released last night show that recent years are the hottest ever measured – and that there is worse to come. The US’s annual federal climate report shows 2018 was the fourth warmest year since records began in 1880 – with the top three being 2016, 2017 and 2015. The report says the global average temperature has risen consistently since 1965, primarily because of greenhouse gas related to human activity. A separate report released by the UK’s Met Office forecast that 2019 would be even hotter than last year and predicts the next five years will be the hottest on record. Since pre-industrial times the earth has warmed by more than 1 degree Celsius.
- US tech stocks have rebounded strongly in the past month and a half, taking the Nasdaq index to its second fastest reversal of a 20% decline – the definition of a bear market. The quickest rebound was in 2009 when the tech-rich Nasdaq took just 14 trading days to emerge from the bear’s grip; the current turnaround has taken 30 sessions. The longest tech bear market on record was in 1973 when it took 386 trading days for a 20% drop to be recouped. Nasdaq has been helped in the past week by positive reactions to quarterly results from heavyweights Apple and Facebook. The index is now 19.5% above the low point reached in December.
- US president Donald Trump last night nominated senior Treasury official David Malpass to take over as CEO of the World Bank. Malpass, an outspoken critic of the institution, is set to succeed fellow American Jim Yong Kim who resigned as World Bank CEO at the beginning of this month, only two years into his second five-year term. Trump has said it is his top priority to ensure his taxpayers’ dollars are spent effectively and wisely – something he is confident Malpass will achieve. The US, which is the World Bank’s biggest shareholder, traditionally appoints the head of the institution while Europeans select the MD of its Bretton Woods-created twin, the International Monetary Fund.
- In South African related news, ambitious pan African banking giant Atlas Mara has made its first foray into the continent’s most sophisticated financial market through the purchase of a 35% stake in GroCapital, a Centurion-based business which bought the Bank of Athens last year. On the global stage that announcement was overshadowed by the simultaneous announcement that Atlas Mara’s chairman and founder, former Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond, is stepping down. The share price has fallen 85% from the level at which the Diamond-founded bank sold equity ahead of a listing five years ago. Atlas Mara’s biggest investment is a 49% stake in Nigeria’s Union Bank, and it also has interests in banks in Botswana and Rwanda. Diamond, an investment banker who hails from Boston, Massachusetts, was fired from Barclays in 2012 after regulators including the Bank of England rebuked the bank’s operating practices.
