For the first time in history, two Chinese banks, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and China Construction Bank (CCB), on Wednesday managed to unseat American oil giant ExxonMobil as the world’s largest public company on the Forbes Global 2000 list, as double-digit growth in both sales and profits propelled them higher in the world’s power rankings.
Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, is looking into allegations that former Deutsche Bank employees hid up to $12 billion in losses by misvaluing credit derivatives during the financial crisis, reported the Financial Times on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the situation.
China’s Suntech Power, once the world’s largest solar panel producer, has been forced by its creditors to file for bankruptcy, reported Xinhua on Wednesday, after accumulating more than $2 billion in debt and defaulting on $541 million in bonds that were due on March 15.
Citigroup has agreed to pay $730 million to settle claims that it misled bondholders of its exposure to subprime mortgages and other high-risk securities during the financial crisis. Citi has denied any wrongdoing but said it agreed to the settlement to “eliminate uncertainties”.
The European Commission on Wednesday fined U.S. giant Microsoft 561 million euros ($732 million) for failing to provide consumers with a choice of Internet browser, as it had promised to do.
EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said this is the first time a company has been punished for failing to meet its obligations, making it a “very serious infringement.”
China’s foreign oil production could soon match rival OPEC members such as Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, after Beijing’s state-owned oil companies spent a record $35 billion in foreign oil investments in 2012.
In the first tally of the impact of China’s recent overseas oil investments, the International Energy Agency estimates China’s national oil companies will produce 3 million barrels per day abroad in 2015, double their 2011 output of 1.5 million bpd and equivalent to Kuwait’s annual output.
U.S. activist investor and hedge fund manager, David Einhorn, is suing Apple in a New York federal court demanding that the company stop hoarding cash and pay out a bigger piece of its $137 billion cash pile to investors.
Speaking to CNBC on Thursday, Einhorn accused Apple of habouring a depression-era mentality, which gave it a tendency to hoard cash and invest only in the safest, lowest-yeilding securities.
Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell Plc was cleared on Wednesday from four out of five allegations of wrongdoing in oil spills in the Niger Delta, reported AFP, with the company’s Nigerian subsidiary ordered to pay unspecified damages for the remaining claim – to a farmer whose fishponds were devastated.
On January 14, Deutsche Bank published their 2013 market outlook in which they identified several geopolitical hotspots to worry investors and businesses. They include a wide range of developed and less developed economies, many of which are key producers of commodities and/or a key link in product supply chains. If something goes awry in any of these hotspots what will be the impact on commodities?
In August last year, Apple Inc, the world’s most valuable company, set a new world record with a market capitalisation of $624 billion. Although this value has since dropped dramatically to around $423 billion today, many analysts still predict that the company will eventually reach the $1 trillion mark in the near future.
Check out this infographic, which tracks the growth of Apple Inc since its humble beginnings in 1976; and find out what the company needs to do to in order to become the world’s first $1 trillion company.
