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32 European major media groups sue Google for $2.3 bln
“The media companies involved have incurred losses due to a less...
European reinsurers’ renewals indicate peaking underwriting margins: Fitch
``We expect strong underwriting profitability to continue...
Alphabet’s Verily targets employer health insurance with Swiss Re partnership
Alphabet Inc’s life sciences division Verily’s new subsidiary, Coefficient Insurance Company, will be backed by the commercial insurance arm of Swiss Re, which is also making a minority investment in the new company.
“Coefficient is aimed at reducing blind spots and providing greater cost control mechanisms for self-funded employers,” Verily Chief Executive Officer Andy Conrad said in a statement.
Self-insurance arrangements are increasingly commonplace among larger employers, who typically pay health insurers to manage their healthcare benefits, but cover the costs of those claims themselves.
Parachutist makes world’s first jump from solar-powered plane
The two-seater prototype plane made the test flight in good weather and to promote renewable energy. Parachutist Raphael Domjan reached a speed of 150 kilometres per hour during his jump, landing near the project base in Payerne.
Coronavirus re-infections raise concerns about immunity
The cases, in Belgium and the Netherlands, follow a report this week by researchers in Hong Kong about a man there who had been re-infected with a different strain of the virus four and a half months after being declared recovered – the first such re-infection to be documented.
That has fuelled fears about the effectiveness of potential vaccines against the virus, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, though experts say there would need to be many more cases of re-infection for these to be justified.
Two-wheelers neither luxury nor sin goods, merit GST rate revision: Finance Ministry
Two-wheelers currently attract 28 percent GST.
“Responding to a question about the need for lowering GST rates on two-wheelers, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman assured that this was indeed a good suggestion as this category is neither a luxury nor a sin good and hence merits a rate revision,”
Reducing goods and services tax (GST) on two-wheelers to 18 percent from the highest slab of 28 percent currently, could make bikes cheaper by up to Rs 10,000, said Rajiv Bajaj, Managing Director at Bajaj Auto.
This “will be taken up with the GST Council”, the statements quoted Sitharaman as saying.
SugarCRM Inc acquiers AI platform for leveraging CRM data
Making sense of data is a perennial issue for companies. Deep learning models are limited by the quality and quantity of input data, which historically has been inaccurate or incomplete in real-life CRM implementations. Node’s deep learning models identify signals with up to 81% greater accuracy than heuristic-based approaches to deliver the tangible benefits of heightened performance and true predictability.
More than 60 survivors pulled from collapsed building in India
The cause of the accident was not clear. But building collapses are common in India, usually due to shoddy construction, substandard materials and disregard of regulations.
Every year, heavy downpours during the June to September monsoon season bring down rain-sodden small and large structures deemed too dangerous to live in.
More than 1,200 people were killed in 1,161 building collapses across India in 2017, according to latest data from the National Crime Records Bureau.
India’s COVID-19 tally rises to 31,67, 323; death toll climbs to 58,390
The COVID-19 case fatality rate has declined to 1.84 per cent.
There are 7,04,348 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country which comprises 22.24 per cent of the total caseload, the data stated.
China vows support for Hong Kong as Financial Hub
Bankers and their lawyers from Hong Kong to Washington have been poring over the fine-print to reconcile how they can dodge major consequences from being squeezed between U.S. and Chinese laws. Running afoul of the legislations put companies at risk of fines or losing their license to do business.
Global dividend plunge to be worst since financial crisis
Global dividend payments plunged $108 billion to $382 billion in the second quarter of the year, fund manager Janus Henderson has calculated, equating to a 22% year-on-year drop which will be the worst since at least 2009.
All regions saw lower payouts except North America, where Canadian payments proved to be resilient. Worldwide, 27% of firms cut their dividends, while worst affected Europe saw more than half do so and two thirds of those cancel them outright.
“2020 will see the worst outcome for global dividends since the global financial crisis,” Janus Henderson said in a report published on Monday.
Hedge Fund collects $3 billion as wildfire insurance claims
The payout yielded Baupost’s biggest profit generator last month and represented a sizable markup from what the firm had anticipated, it told investors Thursday. The fund bought $6.8 billion of subrogation claims against PG&E.
In a subrogation claim, an insurer sells the right to sue to recoup damages suffered by policyholders. Insurers offer the claims at a discount to investors in return for the certainty of being paid upfront.