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The World
Germany's Olaf Scholz's visit exposes EU rifts over China: The visit has sparked criticism as many in Germany and the EU view Scholz as prioritizing short-term business interests over strategic concerns and EU unity. Scholz's decision to proceed with this trip "displays his narrow focus on German short-term business interests, which has taken precedence over any consideration of EU unity," Mathieu Duchatel, director of the Asia Program at Institut Montaigne in Paris, said. (Deutsche Welle)
Scholz op-ed: We don’t want to decouple from China, but can’t be overreliant Germany will seek cooperation where it lies in our mutual interest, but we will not ignore controversies either. (Politico)
North Korea fired around 80 artillery rounds into a maritime border zone overnight, South Korea said, as defence ministers from Seoul and Washington vowed to demonstrate determination in the face of a barrage of missile tests by the North. (Reuters)
Oil prices drop as demand fears dominate: Oil prices slid in early trade on Friday, extending losses from the previous session on fears U.S. interest rates will go higher than previously expected and fresh concerns that COVID outbreaks will dent fuel demand in China. (Reuters)
Home Buyers Are Moving Farther Away Than Ever Before: The rise of remote work and the ballooning cost of housing in major metro areas are leading Americans to move much farther away when buying a home. Buyers who purchased homes in the year ended in June moved a median of 50 miles from their previous residences. That distance is the highest on record in annual data going back to 2005 and follows five straight years in which the median distance moved was constant at 15 miles, NAR said. (Wall Street Journal)
81% of CHROs say they’re cutting head count: If you’re not scaling back, you’re in the minority of HR chiefs, according to a new Pulse Survey from PwC. Four out of five chief HR officers across sectors told PwC they were reducing their workforce “to a great extent.” That’s not just layoffs — the 81% of CHROs who said they were cutting staff included those who are doing so by offering early retirement, not backfilling positions as employees leave, and freezing hiring. The number of execs who said they were doing layoffs has declined since PwC’s August survey, according to PwC’s workforce strategy partner Julia Lamm. Companies have been so “panic-stricken” about finding talent in the last two and a half years that these methods of getting rid of employees have fallen out of focus, Lamm said. Many PwC clients held on to underperforming employees during the pandemic because of the labor shortage. (Protocol)
Australia floods ‘eclipse what we have seen earlier this year’ with major flooding in nine river systems. (The Guardian)
Economy
Barclays cuts China GDP outlook after forecasting U.S., Europe recession. Barclays expects China’s exports to drop by 2% to 5% in 2023, analysts said in a report Wednesday. That’s because the firm’s U.S. and European economics teams forecast recessions next year. Barclays’ new 2023 China GDP forecast of 3.8% comes after cutting it to 4.5% in September on falling property investment. (CNBC)
The US and its partners have agreed to set a price cap on Russian crude oil at a fixed level, rather than a floating one that moves with benchmark crude prices, officials familiar with the matter said. It is not yet clear at what level the price will be set, but it will be a fixed number and not a discount relative to Brent, coalition officials familiar with the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity on Thursday. (Bloomberg)
Bank of England raises interest rates by 0.75 percentage points: The Bank of England has signaled that borrowing costs will not rise as much as markets expect in the future, even as it imposed the biggest rate rise for three decades to combat soaring inflation. The BoE’s increase to 3% took interest rates to their highest point since 2008. But the central bank issued unusually strong guidance that rates would not need to rise much further to bring inflation back to its 2% target, partly because it forecast a prolonged recession ahead. (Financial Times)
China’s Venture Funding Tumbles Precipitously After Crackdown: Venture capital investments in China are falling sharply this year, making it one of the worst-performing countries globally after the Communist Party’s crackdown and an overall decline in tech valuations. The value of venture capital deals in the country tumbled 44% to $62.1 billion through October, compared with the same period in 2021. (Bloomberg)
Japan mulls US push to curb chip exports without harming China ties: China’s chip market is worth an estimated US$22 billion dollars, that is why one analyst believes Japanese manufacturers are ‘very concerned’ at the US request and are likely to test restrictions. (South China Morning Post)
Technology
The outlook for tech industry jobs worsened, with ride-hailing company Lyft and payments company Stripe both announcing major layoffs and Amazon saying it will freeze corporate hiring for months. (Wall Street Journal)
Warner Bros Discovery warns of more cost-cutting as revenues slide. (Financial Times)
Twitter Plans to Fire Employees by Email: Twitter employees will be notified by email by 9 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on Friday whether they will be laid off, according to a communication sent out to all Twitter employees on Thursday evening. It was the first employee-wide communication since Elon Musk closed his takeover of the social network a week ago. In an unsigned email, Twitter wrote: “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday. We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.” (The Information)
General Mills said it’s temporarily pausing advertising on Twitter, joining Pfizer, Audi and other brands rethinking their presence on the platform now that Elon Musk has taken over and is making his mark on the social media company. (Bloomberg)
Elon Musk has removed “days of rest” from Twitter staff calendars. The monthly, company-wide day off was introduced during the pandemic period. Its expiration is another sign of Musk’s impatience with Twitter’s existing work culture. (Bloomberg)
Sources: Elon Musk is weighing adding paid DMs to let users privately message “Very Important Tweeters”. (New York Times)
Google’s Cloud Deals Hit a Wall: Alphabet Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat told analysts last week that some customers of Google’s cloud servers and productivity apps “are taking longer to decide, and some have committed to deals with shorter terms or smaller deal sizes, which we attribute to a more challenging [macroeconomic] environment.” That was an understatement. Commitments from Google Cloud customers quintupled between the end of 2019 and the end of 2021, securities filings show. This year, they’ve hardly grown at all. (The Information)
China’s central bank is struggling to get more than a dozen leading internet groups to comply with a December deadline to share users’ personal information with state-backed credit-scoring companies. The stand-off over who should control access to the internet groups’ vast troves of data on their users comes as Beijing works to tighten its grip on the country’s tech sector and consumer lending. The People’s Bank of China ordered Tencent, Meituan and other large platforms to share user data, ranging from shopping records to travel history, with two state-backed groups, Baihang and Pudao, by early next month, according to people briefed on the negotiations. (Financial Times)
Smart Links
Carvana tumbles after posting declines in nearly every aspect of the car reseller’s business. (CNBC)
Deloitte axes half of UK executive team. (Financial Times)
CNBC Cancels Shepard Smith’s Show Amid Business-News Push. (Variety)
News alone is no longer the driver of New York Times subscription growth. (Poynter)
US policymakers could be alienating the Chinese AI researchers they want to attract. (Protocol)
The Weird-Looking, Fuel-Efficient Planes You Could Be Flying In One Day. (Wall Street Journal)