Category:

Eco/Invest/Demography

Hedge funds make pandemic bet on insurance

Investors reckon that in a world where virus outbreaks and climate disasters may be the new normal, innovative new insurance products such as those providing relief during future lockdowns or when staff sickness hinders business, will prove lucrative.

Even while share prices remain subdued, insurers’ debt sales for the most part have been oversubscribed this year, thanks to strong credit quality, typically in the single-A category.

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Retreating monsoon rains worry paddy farmers in Maha

Gondia district agriculture superintendent Ganesh Ghorpade and his Bhandara counterpart Hindurao Chavan told PTI that farmers need not worry as of now, but if rains continue for some more time, then “things would get tougher”.

They have asked cultivators to delay the crop cutting work by five to six days and also keep a tab on rain prediction before harvesting the crop.

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Ant Group’s $35 bln IPO unlikely to be hurt by possible U.S. curbs

Ant is working towards a dual-listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong possibly as soon as this month in what sources have said could be the world’s largest IPO, surpassing oil giant Saudi Aramco’s 2222.SE $29.4 billion float in December.
U.S. President Donald Trump is considering curbs on Ant, an affiliate of Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba and Tencent over concerns their payment platforms threaten national security, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.

If implemented, the restrictions would illustrate how Trump’s administration is seeking to prevent Chinese companies from embedding themselves in the U.S. financial system before they become a significant competitive threat.

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Google faces antitrust case in India over abuse in smart TVs market: Report

The case has been filed by two Indian antitrust lawyers, Kshitiz Arya and Purushottam Anand. They both confirmed the case filing against Google for alleged abuse in the smart television market, but declined to comment further.

The case is Google’s fourth major antitrust challenge in India, one of its key markets where it is currently facing public criticism from local startups for enforcing certain policies and company charges they contend hurt their growth.

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September was world’s hottest on record, EU climate change service says

Extending a long-term warming trend caused by emissions of heat-trapping gases, high temperatures this year have played a major role in disasters from fires in California and the Arctic to floods in Asia, scientists say.

“As we go into an even warmer world, certain extremes are likely to happen more often and be more intense,” Copernicus senior scientist Freja Vamborg told Reuters, pointing to heat waves and periods of intense rain as examples of this.

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