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☆ Major banks are bullish on Hong Kong's economy and China growth prospects
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Lee Ying Shan | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

"Hong Kong business is as strong as it has ever been," said StanChart's CEO Bill Winters. I have every confidence Hong Kong will rebound strongly next year. People walk through Exchange Square in Hong Kong on October 28, 2022. Major lenders Standard Chartered and HSBC expressed confidence in the rebound of Hong Kong's and China's economy, even as China ramps up its Covid measures and Hong Kong's economy posted its worst quarter in more than two years. Eventually China will start to open up and the economy will rebound strongly," Quinn told CNBC.

☆ Nearshoring represents 'a lifetime opportunity' to invest in Mexico, BofA says. How to play it
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Fred Imbert | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

This has already led to a manufacturing surge in Mexico and represents "a lifetime opportunity" to invest in Latin America's second-largest economy, according to Bank of America. "Nearshoring represents Mexico's best growth opportunity for the next 10 years and it is already occurring," Bank of America's Capistran said. The EWW is up 1.9% in 2022, easily outperforming the S & P 500. All five of those stocks are outperforming the S & P 500 this year, with FirstCash jumping nearly 30% and Sanmina popping 38%. PriceSmart and Ingredion are down 6.4% and 8.2%, respectively, in 2022, but that's still better than the S & P 500's 19% drop for the year.

☆ 'Planet killer' asteroid hidden by the sun may threaten Earth in a few thousand years
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( Morgan Mcfall-Johnsen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Astronomers discovered a "planet killer" asteroid that may pose a threat to Earth in future millennia. That makes it a "planet killer," Scott S. Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institution for Science, said in a press release announcing the discovery on Monday. But there could be other planet killer asteroids lurking unseen in the blind spot where 2022 AP7 was discovered: within the orbits of Earth and Venus, between us and the sun. That makes it very difficult to spot asteroids located between Earth and the sun. "There are likely only a few [near-Earth asteroids] with similar sizes left to find," Sheppard said in the release.

☆ Taylor Swift announces first U.S. stadium tour in five years
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( Gabriella Borter | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Her 2023 tour will feature the new album as well as being a retrospective of her prolific and storied career. In an Instagram post, Swift said the tour - dubbed "The Eras Tour" - would be "a journey through the musical eras of my career (past and present!)". Singer Taylor Swift arrives to speak at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada September 9, 2022. Swift's last stadium tour was in 2018, to promote her album "Reputation". The opening acts for The Eras Tour will include artists Paramore, Beabadoobee, Phoebe Bridgers, Girl in Red, MUNA, Haim, Gracie Abrams, Gayle and Owenn.

Here are Insider's top picks for same-day or next-day funding:Best quick personal loans LightStream Personal LoanUpstart Personal LoanAvant Personal LoanBest Egg Personal LoanRocket Loans Personal LoanOppLoans Personal LoansLendingPoint Personal Loan Chevron icon It indicates an expandable section or menu, or sometimes previous / next navigation options. Same day Editor's rating 4.5/5 A five pointed star A five pointed star A five pointed star A five pointed star A five pointed star APR 5.99% to 21.49% with AutoPay (Rates as of 10/25/2022. This lender topped Insider's list of best personal loans in 2022, and quick funding is yet another bonus. Other fast personal loans we consideredNot all banks that offer personal loans will fund them quickly. Fast cash personal loan credit requirementsLender Minimum credit score LightStream 660 Upstart 600 Avant 600 Best Egg 640 LendingPoint 580 Rocket Loans 620 OppLoans No minimumThe best quick personal loan for you will largely depend on your credit score.

SINGAPORE, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Standard Chartered (STAN.L) reported a 40% increase in quarterly profit as higher interest rates boosted the emerging markets-focused bank's income and gave it ammunition to upgrade its revenue outlook. The bank expects income to grow 13% this year instead of a previously forecast 10%. "We remain confident in the delivery of our 2024 financial targets," CEO Bill Winters said in a statement on Wednesday. "Our performance this year has been strong, and the pace of economic recovery in many of our footprint markets is encouraging, notwithstanding increasing recessionary pressures in certain Western markets," Winters said. StanChart's statutory credit impairment charges more than doubled to $227 million from a year earlier, reflecting weakness in key economies.

☆ Transforming A Mazda RX-7 With Manga-Style Paint
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( Anthony Dinardo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The process involves using multiple colors of high quality spray paint and paint pens. And I tell them it's spray paint, and then their head literally just explodes. When it comes to that specific style spray paint, It's a winter proof, weatherproof, everything you think of it promotes it on the side of the can. If you get a full three coat paint job from me, it's glassy, it looks like glass. So once you put it over, put the clear coat over the paint job, it's a real paint job and it looks good.

☆ Standard Chartered third-quarter profit jumps 40%, beats estimates
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-26 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Pedestrians pass the headquarters of Standard Chartered in London on Feb. 14, 2022. Standard Chartered's first-quarter pre-tax profit rose 6%, beating market expectations, as the emerging markets-focused lender benefited from rising interest rates and flagged a robust outlook. Standard Chartered posted a 40% increase in quarterly profit, as the emerging markets-focused bank benefited from a sharp rise in income on higher interest rates. The improved performance and rising revenues from interest rates helped StanChart to lift its outlook for the year. StanChart's statutory credit impairment charges more than doubled to $227 million from a year earlier, reflecting weakness in key economies.

☆ Walmart, Disney among top 12 employers that laid off thousands during the pandemic, House inquiry finds
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-25 | by ( Chelsey Cox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Black hourly workers at Walmart were also reportedly fired twice as often as white hourly workers in 2020, at 19.7% vs. 10.4%. Members of this group were also fired three times as frequently, 19.7%, as Black salaried employees at 6.3% and almost five times as frequently, 19.7%, as white salaried employees at 4%. In comparison, 10.2% of male hourly workers and 12.4% of female hourly workers with access to sick leave quit that year. Chevron's hourly workers did better than salaried workers more than half the time and while Exxon's hourly workers fared better than salaried workers 40% of the time, according to the report. For instance, Walmart generally did not allow hourly workers to use paid time off benefits until after 90 days of employment.

☆ Exclusive emails show Austin officials bragging about its lack of oversight of a new self-driving delivery service from Ford and Argo AI
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Caroline Haskins | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Several cities launched an autonomous vehicle delivery service for Walmart orders with Ford vehicles using Argo AI's self-driving car technology. In 2016, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey announced Uber's self-driving car pilot by proclaiming that Arizona "welcomes Uber self-driving cars" while states with regulatory laws do not. Part of the companies' motivation for the self-driving car delivery service is the drive to meet Walmart's consumer demands for "next-day or same-day delivery." Argo AI was founded in 2016 by two former engineers from Google and Uber's self-driving car programs, respectively. Argo AI hired more than 1,700 people in 6 years but laid off many of its recruiters in July.

☆ Walmart overhauls its intimates and sleepwear line to keep pace in a competitive market
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Melissa Repko | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Walmart has rolled out Joyspun, a new intimates and sleepwear line. Walmart is overhauling one of its most popular apparel lines — its top intimates and sleepwear brand. Secret Treasures, Walmart's largest intimates and sleepwear line, drove $1 billion in sales last fiscal year — one of the retailer's 13 private brands of general merchandise to do so. Yet the intimates and sleepwear space has gotten more competitive, especially during the pandemic as people worked remotely and spent more time at home. Joyspun is also hitting Walmart's stores and websites ahead of the holiday season.

☆ Aldi is the US's fastest-growing grocery chain and more households earning $50-100K are shopping there. Here are the no-frills tactics that help make it so cheap.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-22 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Aldi is the US's fastest-growing grocer for the third year running, the real-estate firm JLL said. Aldi almost always has the lowest prices for core products like bread, milk, and eggs, Monford said. Monford added that consumers "don't mind" that products aren't taken out of their boxes because they're shopping at Aldi for value. Campbell said the Aldi stores near her generally had just four or five aisles. Vadakkepatt said Aldi's stores have fewer employees and shorter hours than at other chains.

☆ Walmart doubles down on Africa despite a decade of frustration
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-21 | by ( Nqobile Dludla | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

A shopper pushes a trolley as she leaves a Builders Warehouse store owned by Walmart-led Massmart Holdings in South Africa, at Gleneagles, in the south of Johannesburg, South Africa, October 20, 2022. Instead, Massmart's units outside South Africa struggled with foreign exchange risk, tricky regulatory environments and macroeconomic volatility. Earlier this year, an internal Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) memo detailing its expansion plans, including a maiden foray onto the continent via South Africa, leaked to media. The pending battle with its global rival looms over Walmart's e-commerce strategy for Massmart, several shareholders told Reuters. While Walmart can now firmly set the direction at its South African unit, its track record outside the United States is spotty.

☆ Walmart's net profit rises 10% in Mexico, even as expenses climb
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

MEXICO CITY, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Walmart's Mexico unit on Thursday posted a 10% jump in third-quarter net profit, tracking analyst estimates, while expenses grew faster than revenue due to higher e-commerce and labor costs, the company said. Walmart de Mexico (WALMEX.MX), the biggest retailer in Mexico, posted a net profit of 12.15 billion pesos ($603.8 million), or 0.70 pesos a share, compared with the Refinitiv estimate of 0.69 pesos. The company known as Walmex said e-commerce makes up 4.8% of total Mexico sales, up from 4.5% a year ago. "The current environment requires a lot more focus and attention than the day-to-day business typically does," said Chief Executive Guilherme Loureiro in the results webcast. Annual inflation hit 8.76% in the first half of September.

☆ Walmart's Mexico unit sees quarterly net profit rise 10%
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

MEXICO CITY, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Walmart's Mexico unit on Thursday said its third-quarter net profit rose 10% from the year-earlier period, helped by strong same-store sales as the retailer works to keep prices low at a time of swelling inflation. Walmart de Mexico (WALMEX.MX), the biggest retailer in Mexico, posted a net profit of 12.15 billion pesos ($603.8 million). The quarterly revenue of 197.89 billion pesos equated to a 12.4% rise from the prior July-to-September period. The company known as Walmex said in a statement it opened 26 stores in the quarter in Mexico and Central America, and invested in its e-commerce business, which now makes up 4.8% of total sales in Mexico. ($1 = 20.1271 pesos at end-September)Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterReporting by Daina Beth Solomon and Noe Torres; Editing by Cassandra Garrison and Will DunhamOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ The asteroid NASA crashed into looks like a comet now, with a forked tail, Hubble image reveals
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( Morgan Mcfall-Johnsen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a comet-like forked tail streaming from the asteroid Dimorphos. NASA's DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid in September, as practice for saving Earth. In fact, it kind of looks like a comet now, NASA discovered when the Hubble Space Telescope snapped a new image of the distant space rock. So on September 26, the DART spacecraft slammed into Dimorphos, pushing it slightly closer to the larger asteroid it's orbiting, called Didymos. Telescopes across the planet and throughout Earth's orbit, including the new James Webb Space Telescope, are watching the asteroid closely.

☆ Big bargains will dominate the holiday season, but shoppers may not be sold
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-20 | by ( Melissa Repko | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Last holiday season, shoppers started buying gifts early to avoid out-of-stocks and shipping delays. Even with the bigger discounts, industry-watchers expect a muted holiday season because of households' stretched budgets. Consulting firm Bain & Co. forecasts growth of as much as 7.5% from last holiday season, but when adjusted for inflation, that is only 1% to 3%. Computers, the category that's expected to have the highest level of discounting during the holiday season, according to Adobe, has seen cooling demand. More items were on sale during backyard barbecue season than during peak holiday season a year ago.

☆ Be careful before 'quick quitting' and joining the Great Resignation. Your employer may hand you a bill for your job training.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-19 | by ( Jacob Zinkula | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Workers quit in high numbers over the past few years — sometimes after being at the job under a year. Some employers are demanding that quitting workers reimburse them for their training costs. Most prevalent in the healthcare, trucking, and retail industries, these agreements can cost quitting workers thousands of dollars. England of charging quitters $6,000 for reimbursed training costs if they leave before a certain period of time. Regardless, many companies say they are well within their rights to demand compensation for training costs when employees part ways.

☆ Ex-classmate convicted of murdering long-missing California student Kristin Smart
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Oct 18 (Reuters) - A former classmate of Kristin Smart, the California college freshman whose 1996 disappearance long stood as one of the state's most sensational unsolved crimes, was found guilty on Tuesday of murdering her, prosecutors said. The guilty verdict against Paul Flores, who was arrested and charged with Smart's death in April 2021, almost a quarter-century after she vanished, was returned by a jury in Monterey County Superior Court. A separate jury found his elderly father, Ruben Flores, not guilty on a charge of helping to hide Smart's body. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterThe murder verdict was announced on the Facebook page of the San Luis Obispo County district Attorney, Dan Dow. The trials were moved from San Luis Obispo County in a change of venue requested by defense lawyers because of intense pretrial publicity surrounding the investigation.

☆ Instacart is losing ground to rival in-house delivery options at Costco, Sam's Club, and others — and it could hamstring its IPO ambitions
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Alex Bitter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

E-commerce sales through Walmart's Sam's Club grew by 5.5%. Such sales grew by 80.7% at Costco and by 9.3% at the Texas-based chain HEB. "They have brands that they like, and if they offer that delivery service, they're very likely to go to that brand." Sam's Club, for instance, welcomed Instacart's shoppers to its stores in the US in 2018. Under that service, orders are picked by Sam's Club employees and delivered to customers using the retailer's delivery partners.

☆ A merger with Albertsons could bring Kroger's tech initiatives, like automated warehouses and smart carts, to over 5,000 locations
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Alex Bitter | Nancy Luna | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Kroger is building its own tech infrastructure, including automated warehouses for delivery orders. Here are Kroger's biggest e-commerce and technology initiatives:A ClusterTruck ghost kitchen inside a Kroger in the Midwest. The delivery-focused ghost kitchen touts a Cheesecake Factory-inspired menu of 80 to 100 food items. Over the last few years, ClusterTruck opened locations inside Kroger stores in Indiana and Ohio. Another partnership, this one with the autonomous-car startup Nuro, has stationed self-driving vehicles to deliver grocery orders in certain cities since 2018.

☆ Walmart's mission to offer accessible healthcare has been slow going. But as competition heats up from Amazon, it has developed these 5 strategies to disrupt the lucrative industry.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Ben Tobin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

The company has made several big moves on telehealth, clinics healthcare research, and more. The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer announced in October the launch of the "Walmart Healthcare Research Institute," an institute geared toward helping underserved communities participate in clinical research. But Walmart has still faced significant challenges, from major leadership departures to a slower than expected rollout of healthcare clinics. Rolling out healthcare clinics nationwideA Walmart Health center. Launching a research institute for clinical trial participationWalmart is seeking to bolster clinical trial participation with its new healthcare research institute.

☆ A fighter pilot's promotion shows how China's navy is learning from the US as its aircraft carrier fleet grows
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Minnie Chan | South China Morning Post | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The promotion of flying officers to command positions on China's carriers mirrors the US approach. A CCTV documentary highlights another similarity, with the Chinese navy now training its own pilots. "As a user of ship-borne weapons, I would share my [naval flight experiences] with comrades working in the equipment department and try efforts to improve our operational system, finding a better way to help China's aircraft carrier undertaking," Xu told a documentary on CCTV. The launch in June of China's third and most advanced carrier, the Fujian, has increased the demand for more outstanding carrier-based pilots like Xu. The new aircraft combat platform's electromagnetic catapults — similar to those on the USS Gerald R. Ford supercarrier — means the PLA Navy will have to master a new launch and recovery system.

A 20-ounce packet of Sara Lee Classic White Sandwich bread goes for $2.50 at Kroger, compared to $2.24 at Walmart. Nearly two-thirds of Kroger's 2,700 stores are unionized, like a "majority" of Albertsons stores, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union says on its website. Grocery stores such as Kroger, Albertsons, in contrast, are often forced to rely on coupons or buy-one-get-one-free promotions funded by companies like P&G and Conagra in order to compete. Euromonitor data shows that 25.2% of all dollars spent on groceries in the United States last year went to Walmart, while Kroger got 8.1% and Albertson's 4.8%. Walmart shoppers have a median income of $73,000.

☆ 'Top Gun: Maverick' studio Skydance just scored a $400 million funding led by KKR. Meet 16 private equity players betting big on Hollywood now.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-14 | by ( Elaine Low | Claire Atkinson | Madeline Berg | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Private equity firms are investing more deeply in film and TV content companies, even amid a possible recession. Private equity accounted for 42% of deals over the last year vs. 24% in 2018, according to PwC. KKR just led a $400 million funding round for Skydance, giving the "Top Gun: Maverick" studio a $4 billion valuation. And earlier in July, Swedish firm EQT invested in UTA, which makes the private equity player the largest outside shareholder of the talent agency. And KKR is continuing to make big bets: It just led a $400 million funding round in "Top Gun: Maverick" studio Skydance that sent the production company's valuation north of $4 billion.

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