Currency Controls Imposed to Support Economy in Argentina

Currency Controls Imposed to Support Economy in Argentina

Argentina has placed a currency control to stabilize markets as they face a deepening financial crisis. The government has moved to restrict foreign currency purchases following a sharp drop in the value of the peso. Firms will also have to seek central bank permission to sell pesos to purchase foreign currency and to make transfers overseas.

Argentina is also sought to defer dent payments to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with the crisis. From a released official bulletin, the government wrote that it was needed to adopt a series of extraordinary measures to guarantee the normal functioning of the economy to sustain the level of activity and employment and protect customers.

The central bank also mentioned that the measures were meant to maintain currency stability. They also said that as individuals can continue to purchase US dollars, they may need to seek permission to buy more than $10,000 (£8,223.50) a month. These measures will be in place until the end of this year.

Argentina has been on a financial crisis struggle which has been aggravated by the president’s defeat in a recent primary poll. The peso fell to a record low in the previous month after the vote indicated that the business-friendly government of President Mauricio Macri could be ousted in elections in October.

Mr. Macri, who was elected in 2015, promised to boost Argentina’s economy with a raft of liberal economic reforms. However, the country is currently in a deep recession and has one of the world’s highest inflation rates going at 22 percent during the first half of the year. The country’s economy contracted by 5.8 percent in the first quarter of 2019 after 2.5 percent of shrinkage took place in 2018. Three million people have plunged into poverty over the past year.

Reference

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/business-49547189

 

Walmart’s Decision to Stop Gun Sales after Catastrophic Shootings

Walmart’s Decision to Stop Gun Sales after Catastrophic Shootings

Walmart announced its intentions to discontinue all sales of short-barrel rifle ammunition which can be used with military-style weapons. They also announced to stop sales of handgun ammunition and all handgun trades in Alaska after two horrific shootings at their store during summer.

They are asking customers at Walmart and Sam’s Club to no longer carry firearms openly in stores, states or where open carry is allowed unless in the presence of authorized law enforcement officers. According to Dan Barlett, the executive president of corporate affairs, open curry regulations is also currently on the books in more than 26 states.

Walmart mentioned that it would not be changing its policies for customers with permits for concealed carry. They will also be adding signage to stores to communicate these changes. According to CEO Doug McMillon, they believe the opportunity for someone to misinterpret a situation even in open carry states could lead to catastrophic results. McMillon said that they hope everyone would understand the circumstances which led to the new policy and will respect the concerns of their fellow shoppers and their associates.

He also said that they have been listening to many people inside and outside of the company as they think about the role they can take part in helping make the county safer. He added that it was now clear to them that the quo is unacceptable. McMillon said that he would send letters to the White House and other Congressional leaders requesting action on “common-sense measures.” He is calling on the government to reinforce background checks and to take away weapons from those who pose an imminent danger.

The announcement from Walmart came after the retailer has faced backlash from its employees for not pulling weapons from stores after the horrific shootout in July at Walmart stores in Mississippi and one in August in El Pas, Texas where 22 people were killed.

Reference

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/03/walmart-plans-to-dramatically-step-back-from-gun-sales-after-horrific-shootings.html

 

Facebook Faces a Hefty Fine of $5bn to Settle Privacy Concerns

Facebook Faces a Hefty Fine of $5bn to Settle Privacy Concerns

According to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Facebook will have to pay a record of a $5bn fine to settle some privacy concerns. They also have to establish an independent privacy committee which their chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, will not have any control over.

The FTC had been looking into allegations that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained the data of up to 87 million Facebook users. The probe went further to include other issues such as facial recognition. The fine is said to e the biggest ever imposed on any company that has violated consumer’s privacy.

According to FTC chairman, Joe Simons, despite repeated promises to its billions of users globally that they could control how their personal information is shared, Facebook undermines consumers’ choices. Simons mentioned that the hefty fine was designed to change Facebook’s entire privacy culture to prevent the likelihood of continued violations.

The FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection began investigating Facebook in March 2018 after they found out that personal data was illegally harvested from an online personality quiz and sold to a data analytics firm known as Cambridge Analytica.

There were also claims that the data may have been used to attempt to influence the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election and the UK Brexit referendum. As much as only 270,000 people took the quiz, whistleblower Christopher Wylie alleges that the information of some 50 million users from the US was harvested without explicit consent via their friend’s network.

However, Cambridge Analytica was not the only entity to have access to users’ data, the information gathered using Facebook’s infrastructure at that time, and many other developers had taken advantage of it without any form of authorization. Also, the FTC found that some Facebook policies violated regulations against deceptive practices; for example, Facebook’s data policy was misleading to people who employed the use of the Facial recognition tool.

Reference

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49099364

 

 

Young People Opt for Niche Jobs in China

Young People Opt for Niche Jobs in China

New and different kind of jobs is arousing the interest of young employees in China. Some of these jobs have never been heard of by their predecessors, for instance, pet trainer, home party manager, e-sports consultants, pet trainer, scalp therapist, and photo-shooting tour planner. This shows how the Chinese service industry is going through a consumption upgrading as numerous customized services are created by the increasing demand of customers and the booming internet.

According to a report released by Chinese online recruitment platform Zhaopin and on-demand service provider MeituanDianping, up to ninety percent of employees involved in emerging occupations in the service industry were born after 1980, half of them being from the 1990s and twenty-two percent were born after 1995. This was based on responses from 9,784 participants.

Some of the industries covered include entertainment, catering, hospitality, cosmetic medicine, weddings, training, and parent-child interaction. The top reasons for these career choices were; positive about the future of the industry, chance to deal with different people, pure love, wanting to try new things and flexible working time.

Tu Chao, 31, manages a room escape brand in Chengdu after giving up on his job as a mining engineer at a state-owned enterprise. The Room escape is a physical adventure game when a group of people is locked up and have to solve a series of puzzles and decorations are based on a particular script. Others also involve role-playing.

According to Chao, it is cool and exciting to bring an immersive experience to customers with different settings or stories in your mind. He added that it is more real than watching a film and that the revenue is growing and this particular segment is developing fast in China. KeXuan in her 20s is a stylist specialized in Hanfu, ancient clothing of China’s Han ethnic group. She also left her job with a company in early 2018.

Reference

 

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201907/23/WS5d364c1ea310d8305640068b.html

 

Samsung Plans to Shift Its Focus in China to High-End Emerging Sectors

Samsung Plans to Shift Its Focus in China to High-End Emerging Sectors

The Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd is now shifting its attention to high-end manufacturing and emerging sectors such as batteries and capacitors in China as the South Korean technology giant is soon planning to close its smartphone manufacturing plant in Huizhou, Guangdong province, its last smartphone factory in China.

According to Industry experts, the tech heavyweight has faced intense competition from other local smartphone makers like Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo, making them adjust their strategy in China. They are aspiring to get hold of opportunities arising from electric vehicle batteries and automotive devices.

When requested to comment on the Huizhou factory closure, Samsung declines to say but the official WeChat account of Huizhou Samsung Electronics last week posted recruitment information for companies in Guangdong province like the carmaker BYD Co Ltd and battery supplier Desay Corp.

Samsung closed its facility in Tianjin last December as part of their ongoing efforts to enhance efficiency in production facilities. They also closed a plant in Shenzhen last April. However, Samsung said that in December, they plan to invest up to $2.4 billion to build new battery and capacitor plants in Tianjin.

Reports from the media in June mentioned that Samsung had already started offering voluntary redundancy to the employers in Huizhou. They responded at that time and said that they were adjusting the production volume if their smartphone factory in Huizhou.

Besides form the plants in China, Samsung is going into manufacturing electronic devices in Vietnam and India. They have increased their spending in Vietnam, developing eight manufacturing plants with their total investment reaching $17.3 billion by last April. As much as they are the world’s biggest smartphone maker, Samsung’s sales are close to being negligible in China. A market consultancy Strategy Analytics says that in the first quarter of this year, the company sales accounted for just one percent of the Chinese market.

Reference

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201907/23/WS5d366188a310d8305640071c.html

 

Trump’s Sanction on Chinese Company May Evoke Tension

Trump’s Sanction on Chinese Company May Evoke Tension

The Trump administration is now imposing economic penalties on a Chinese company who imported Iranian oil. This decision poses an opportunity for tension between Washington and Beijing. According to Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, the economic sanction is due to the Chinese state-owned company and its top executive purchasing Iranian oil in violation of an American ban.

Mr. Pompeo mentioned that in a foreign policy speech as a veterans’ convention in Florida that Zhuhai Zhenrong, the Chinese company, and its chief executive, Li Youmin were violating the US limits on the Iranian oil sector. The sanction posed by Trump’s administration is the first of its kind, penalizing a Chinese company and executive for defying its restrictions on Iranian oil exports.

The step is sure to increase tensions between Beijing and Washington, which are embroiled in a long-running trade war and a strategic competition that extends to the globe. It will also add to the crisis in the Persian Gulf region, where the US and Iran are trading low-level hostilities and where the Iranian soldiers are boarding and grabbing commercial ships. The Treasury Department which is in charge of enforcing sanctions included the Chinese names announced by Mr. Pompeo to a list of Iran-related designations.

Iran’s largest revenue source is oil, and Trump’s administration targets to bring those exports to zero as part of a sanctioned campaign meant to force Iran to stop any ambitions it might be having for a nuclear weapon and its support of militias in the Middle East.

Mr. Trump announced a significant sanction on Iran after he backed out last year form a nuclear containment deal which Iran reached with world powers in 2015. His step was widely criticized by different governments since Iran had been abiding by the nuclear agreement that offered sanction relief in return for their compliance.

Reference

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/world/asia/sanctions-china-iran-oil.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FBusiness%20and%20Economy%20in%20China&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection

 

Here are Some of The Companies That Say Restricting Abortion is Bad for Business

Top business executives from a whopping 180 companies stand with legalizing abortion in all states. They say, restricting abortion is detrimental for business.

On Monday, a letter that was endorsed by numerous business moguls appeared in the New York Times. The letter urged companies to stand for health rights. “It’s time for companies to stand up for reproductive health care,” part of it read.

They insist that limiting access to abortion will threaten “the health, independence and economic stability of our employees and customers.” The letter said that restricting abortion is against companies’ values and dents their efforts to employ a diverse workforce.

The letter was endorsed by business leaders among them:

• Jack Dorsey – CEO of Twitter
• Chief executive from Yelp, Slack, Tinder, H&M, Postmates

Over the years, businesses have seemed to stand their ground when it comes to issues such as gun control, LGBT, and immigration but few were vocal on the abortion subject. But after Alabama passed a law that almost totally inhibits abortion, everything changed.

To this end, several major entertainment stables such as Netflix, Disney, and WarnerMedia said on May that they’d stop producing films in states such as Georgia if they proceed to pass the law that prohibits abortion when a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Vikrum Aiyer, who is the president of public policy in Postmates said in an interview with CNN Business that he decided to take his ground due to values and that restricting abortion significantly inhibits a woman’s ability to make economic decisions.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/10/business/ceo-letter-abortion-ad-new-york-times/index.html

 

 

This is how CNBC choose American’s Top States for Business in 2019

Ever wondered how CNBC chooses the ideal states to do business? We got you covered! Read on for more on this.

CNBC uses data analysis to come up with the list. The CNBC staff then scores the 50 states on 64 metrics across 10 categories. It is not based on opinion but the actual performance by the states. The states are graded based on the qualities they believe attract business.

The states are then provided with a letter grade for each of the 10 categories in a bid to measure their performance. However, ranking is solely based on points scored. So, here are this year’s categories.

• Workforce

They are graded in regards to the number of employees available, education level of the workforce, and overall migration of the college-educated workforce. Also, they consider how well employees are versed in STEM and workforce productivity based on economic output per job. They also consider the right-to-work laws per state.

• Economy

For a business to thrive, there ought to be a vibrant and diverse economy. The organization looks economic growth, residential market health, and rate of job creation. Another aspect is the budget picture and retiree health care obligations and pension health. Also, they consider the number of behemoth corporations that are headquartered there.

• Infrastructure

How well are people able to access markets? They assess the state’s transportation system by considering the value of goods transported via air, road, rail, and waterways. Also, they look at the number of roads, bridges, and availability of air travel per state. They measure the time one gets to work and how many people travel per day.

• Cost of doing business

They look at the tax climate of a particular state and if there are state-sponsored incentives that lower the cost of doing business. The cost of renting an office, industrial space, and cost of wages is also considered.

Others include education, quality of life, access to capital, technology & innovation, business friendliness, and cost of living.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/08/how-cnbc-chose-americas-top-states-for-business-in-2019.html

 

 

 

Want To Grow Your Business? Here Are Tips You Can Employ

In a recent interview at Click’s Funnel’s Funnel Hacking Live Conference, Alex Charfen, who is a business mogul, shared some of the tips that can add momentum to your business. Charfen has seen it all; from being bankrupt during the 2008 recession to building a company that produces revenue of more than $10 million per year. So, which are these vital hacks?

• Reduce stress and pressure in your life

Charfen recommends that entrepreneurs should take care of themselves, for example, by hydration, meditation, nutrition, and also something he calls “daily momentum planning.”

He said that if you perceive your income is that of a multi-billion dollar athlete or celebrity, then you should treat yourself as one. He said that “If there is pressure and noise anywhere in life, it’s creating pressure and noise everywhere in life.”

• Be polarizing and attract an authentic audience

Charfen said that although the United States has over 29 million businesses, a whopping 22 million fall under the range of $100,000 in revenue. He attributes this due to entrepreneurs’ habit of making their products to everyone in the country.

“If you walk to a room of 100 people, you should be able to identify the two or three that are your market. If you walk to a room of 100 people and you think to yourself, 80 people could buy my product; you are doing it wrong.”

• Grow with your team

Charfen said that when one starts a business successfully, he/she gets entitled to running the company on their own. He even concurred with the belief that it becomes hard to ask for help from your team. He said that not having a team exposes you to all manner of eventualities, and what that means is that should you get hit, everything stops.

Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/video/334635

 

 

 

 

Top Business Mistakes You Cannot Afford To Make

Just imagine the chills you’d get when you find yourself and your business in a scandal. What would be your response to endless questions from your employees, journalists, officials, and investors?  Awful, right?

Will, some of these mistakes businesses make are at sometimes deemed okay at the moment, but few months down the line, everything falls apart. So, which are these mistakes you should avoid? Let’s find out.

1. Lack of transparency

Telling the truth can be a very bitter pill, especially when the consequences are negative. But, many business people regrettably result in telling lies rather than sticking to the truth. And the results are not pleasing. To avoid this vicious cycle, tell the truth or perhaps selective truth since not everybody needs to know the truth.

2. Putting all things into writing

Numerous businessmen and women settle to putting things into writing, even without thinking of the consequences. Typically, these writings put you in an awkward position whereby you have to explain whatever you wrote, especially when it is negative.

To mitigate this, always ask yourself what the consequences would be if they get out. How will the public react? Always think of the worst case scenario.

3. Believing a problem will solve itself

Although this happens, it is once in a blue moon. The best bet is to handle the issue in its early stages before it blows over and it’s no longer a secret. When a problem occurs, handle it as early as possible. Better yet, have a strategy at hand just in case of any eventuality.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeslacouncil/2019/06/11/five-business-mistakes-you-cant-afford-to-make/#6ce449ea1b90