- Oil Seen in New Era as OPEC Won’t Yield to U.S. Shale (BBG)
- Alberta Producers With World’s Cheapest Oil Face Cascading Woes (BBG)
- Bundesbank’s Weidmann Rejects Calls for German Stimulus Plan (WSJ)
- Google Should Be Broken Up, Say Euro MPs (BBC)
- Calm comes to troubled Ferguson; protests dwindle across U.S. (Reuters)
- Russia’s Banks Feel Capital Squeeze in Grip of Sanctions (BBG)
- Italian Unemployment Rate Rises to Record, Above Forecasts (BBG)
- Hedge Funds Seek to Tie Up Money for Longer (WSJ)
- Laughing Hacker Who Hit Sony, FBI Now Seeks Legal Lols (BBG)
- China Motorists Exceed 300 Million as Cities Struggle (BBG)
- WHO advises male Ebola survivors to abstain from sex (Reuters)
- Why Italy’s stay-home shoppers terrify the euro zone (Reuters)
- Iron Caps Biggest Monthly Drop Since September as Supply Climbs (BBG)
Overnight Media Digest
WSJ
* Two music publishers are taking aim at a new target in the battle against illegal song downloading: the cable industry. Wednesday afternoon, BMG Rights Management LLC and Round Hill Music LP sued cable giant Cox Communications Inc, claiming that Cox, which provides Internet service to millions, is deliberately turning a blind eye to illegal downloading by its subscribers. (http://on.wsj.com/15F673Y)
* Hedge-fund managers are increasingly persuading investors to lock up their money for longer – in many cases more than double the typical one-year period – and dangling lower fees to close the deal. (http://on.wsj.com/1vr7DyZ)
* European politicians are poised to approve a new generation of lower-cost rockets, partly in response to competition from U.S. launch providers, according to government and aerospace-industry officials on both sides of the Atlantic. (http://on.wsj.com/1xY2DEe)
* Manufacturers are taking matters into their own hands to patch up a weak spot of Thailand’s economy: its worsening shortage of skilled labor. A shrinking labor pool and inadequate training for workers are constraining business and industrial growth, investors here say. Now an increasing number of companies – many in the auto industry – are rolling out apprenticeship programs aimed at beefing up the workforce themselves. (http://on.wsj.com/1HJ21Xh)
* Europe escalated its war against U.S. technology superpowers as the Continent’s two largest economies and the European Parliament on Thursday backed fresh efforts to rein in the growing influence of companies such as Apple Inc, Facebook Inc and Google Inc. (http://on.wsj.com/1zZDYhv)
* Outbrain Inc, a provider of “native ads,” filed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month seeking preliminary approval to list shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market, according to people familiar with the matter. (http://on.wsj.com/1xXb1Uk)
* The financial crisis and its aftermath have revived interest in gold as a monetary policy instrument, especially in Europe, where central banks face public pressure to buy gold or bring back home what they hold overseas. (http://on.wsj.com/1vWk0pg)
* BAIC Motor Corp, a Chinese car maker partly owned by Daimler AG, is planning to start gauging investors’ interest next week in an initial public offering which could raise between $1.2 billion and $1.5 billion in Hong Kong, a person familiar with the situation said. (http://on.wsj.com/1tx1blZ)
FT
Two senior executives, Kevin Grace, group commercial director, and Carl Rogberg, UK finance director, of troubled British grocer Tesco, left the company on Wednesday.
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is set to become the largest investor in Spanish builder FCC after agreeing to buy top shareholder Esther Koplowitz’s part of a $1.3 billion capital increase. This capital increase will leave Slim with a 25.6 percent stake in the company.
Deutsche Bank AG is winding down its physical precious metals trading business, it said on Thursday, moving to further scale back its exposure to commodities.
Director of Britain’s “Business for New Europe”, a pro-EU lobby group and a non-profit organisation, Alisdair McIntosh, is set to quit after less than a year in office.
NYT
* Oil cartel OPEC decided not to cut petroleum production, despite the plunge in prices in recent months that has indicated the diminishing clout of the organization. The price of Brent crude oil fell an additional $4 to a four-year low of about $73. American crude dropped below $70, an even more significant threshold. (http://nyti.ms/1vqEkwq)
* Europe’s resentment of the American technology giant Google Inc reached a new noise level as the European Parliament passed a nonbinding vote to break up the company. European fears of American technology giants have been stoked in the last 18 months by the revelations of Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, about American intelligence agencies’ spying activities and perceived easy access to the world’s tech infrastructure. (http://nyti.ms/120xXWO)
* A London high court judge has ordered Chris Hohn, founder of one of Britain’s largest and most successful hedge funds, to pay his former wife $531 million to settle their messy public divorce, according to statements made in court. The figure demonstrates the immense wealth Hohn has accumulated at the helm of the Children’s Investment Fund, known as TCI. (http://nyti.ms/1rB9PQy)
* Cheyne Capital, a $6 billion hedge fund based in London, plans to buy property it will then rent to organizations that deliver services like affordable housing, aid for the elderly or care through the National Health Service. (http://nyti.ms/1zBFfuq)
* Argentina’s tax agency accused HSBC Bank PLC of helping more than 4,000 Argentines evade taxes by placing their money in secret Swiss accounts. The head of the country’s tax agency said Argentine citizens had evaded about $3 billion in taxes. (http://nyti.ms/120UX8i)
* U.S. Bank, a division of U.S. Bancorp, is being accused of failing to engage with borrowers who missed payments. The legal action could mean fresh problems for other big mortgage banks, as well. (http://nyti.ms/1yiVs8p)
* Japan will follow the United States in forcing automakers to recall all vehicles containing potentially dangerous driver’s-side airbags made by Takata Corp. An order from the Transportation Ministry on the airbags would lead to the recall of an additional 200,000 vehicles in Japan. (http://nyti.ms/1zZHY1E)
Canada
THE GLOBE AND MAIL
** Canada’s energy sector faces the prospect of a lengthy downturn in oil prices and broad spending cuts after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said it did not intend to cut production – a move that sent crude prices and energy shares plunging. Investors immediately punished Canadian energy companies in reaction to the OPEC’s decision on Thursday to stand firm on its production plans, defying industry hopes for a cut. (http://bit.ly/1zCx9lo)
** It has been a long road to redemption for Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, but the lender’s retail banking revamp is finally bearing fruit. For the first time in years, there is a buzz inside CIBC – a confidence instilled in its executives by early signs of above-industry-average growth. After years of lagging its peers, retail banking head David Williamson says he and other executives can’t help but feel a little swagger. (http://bit.ly/121HJIc)
** Patents are a key measure of a country’s ability to turn research into viable products, and Canada is slipping. Per capita patent filings in Canada have been on a steady decline since 2000, according to a study of more than one million applications to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office by the C.D. Howe Institute. (http://bit.ly/11AiBHC)
NATIONAL POST
** Wal-Mart Stores Inc’s Walmart Canada is expanding its ‘grab and go’ locker pickup system for online orders just in time for Christmas, beating Amazon Canada to the punch. Walmart began testing a locker system for web customers at 10 Toronto-area stores in August, offering it as an alternative to home delivery. It allows customers to pick up the goods at a locked unit with a personal PIN code tied to their order, thereby skipping cash register lines and in-store shopping time. (http://bit.ly/1v0D7NH)
** In his blogging about Canada’s hate speech laws, right-wing personality Ezra Levant defamed a young law student as a serial liar, a bigot and a Jew-hating “illiberal Islamic fascist,” bent on destroying Canada’s tradition of free expression, a judge has found. (http://bit.ly/1y7FLmW)
** Canada is sending a team of military medical specialists to Sierra Leone to help combat the spread of Ebola in that country. The government says up to 40 Canadian Armed Forces healthcare and support staff will be deployed to the West African country. (http://bit.ly/1vUeG6z)
China
CHINA SECURITIES JOURNAL
– A cut in China’s reserve requirement ratio (RRR) is “imminent” after the central bank slashed interest rates last week, said Wen Bin, senior economist at Minsheng Bank.
CHINA BUSINESS NEWS
– The Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council, or China’s Cabinet, is seeking public comments on draft rules for the country’s social security fund.
– Balance in China’s margin trading accounts reached a record 800 billion yuan ($130.31 billion), the newspaper said, citing a report.
21ST CENTURY BUSINESS HERALD
– The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) will soon release guidelines on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) regarding cooperation between local governments and social capital, said Ou Hong, an NDRC official.
CHINA DAILY
– The people of Hong Kong must respect Beijing’s jurisdiction over the region in order to smoothly implement the “One country, two systems” policy, the China Daily said in an editorial.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1uQZoIO Tyler Durden