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Showing posts from March, 2019

One more game place market?

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The well-known instant messenger Snapchat may expand towards the business of video games in the near future. Officially, they plan to announce this platform during the Snap Partner Summit conference in West Hollywood, which begins in April 4th. The event will be accessible only by invitation, and its slogan sounds like “talk less, play more”. Snapchat has been working on its gaming initiative, codenamed Project Cognac, for some time now. It is expected that this will be a platform for games right inside the application. It will support microtransactions and collaborate with third-party developers. Several facts speak in favour of this rumour. Last March, Snapchat purchased the British gaming and VR start-up PlaCanvas. Three months later, rumours about their intention to launch a gaming platform appeared. Then it was about autumn, but maybe they needed more time to bring their development to mind. In addition, the research firm Midia (http://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/why

Comedian Zelenskiy strengthens Ukraine presidential poll lead

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Comic actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a political novice who plays a fictional president in a popular TV series, has strengthened his lead in Ukraine's presidential election race, according to an opinion poll published on Monday. But support for the 41-year-old remains far below the level need to secure outright victory in the March 31 ballot, and most voters still do not expect him to become president, the KIIS survey showed. The poll by the Kiev-based research body showed Zelenskiy on 20.7 percent of votes, with incumbent Petro Poroshenko second on 11 percent and opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko third on 8.1 percent. A total of 39 candidates have registered for the election. If no candidate wins 50 percent of the votes cast, the top two will face each other in a run-off on April 21. KIIS said it interviewed 2,004 voters in all regions, except in annexed Crimea, from March 14 to March 22. KIIS said 22.6 percent of those it questioned favored Zelenskiy to win, while 16.5

Team17: record revenues in the new status of the company

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The past year for the British developer and publisher Team17 became the first as a public company, therefore it is doubly interesting to look at their financial report. Both key indicators have updated the records of the creators of Worms: revenue amounted to £ 46 million (+46%), profit - £19.8 million (+18%). The increase in sales of games from third-party developers favourably influenced the profit margin (46%) of their own indie label Team17. This year, they can closely engage in acquisitions or concluding transactions: the British have £23.5 million in cash or other equivalents for this matter. The year was generally saturated for the company. There were 12 launches, of which seven belong to the new IP, four - ports to other platforms and one full-fledged sequel - the continuation of the culinary cooperative Overcooked. CEO Team17 Debbie Bestwick emphasized that now there are more opportunities openly before the industry than ever before, thanks to the proliferation an

Pound’s black week

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Monday's worst currency was the British pound, which plummeted against all major currencies. The current week is very important for sterling, as Prime Minister Theresa May originally planned to vote on Brexit on Tuesday. However, the pound fell after the vote was blocked by Parliament. Since the UK plans to leave the European Union on March 29, time is running out and May should formally request the EU to extend Article 50. Since this would require the approval of all 27 countries of the bloc, the request can be approved at the EU Council meeting on Thursday. If May does not require an extension until Thursday, the pound will have serious problems, because it will mean that the EU should hold an emergency summit on March 28. The Bank of England, which will hold its regular meeting on Thursday, will be unhappy with this development, and therefore the GBP/USD pair may fall to 1.30 if May doesn’t make enough changes or magically gain enough support to hold the third vote by T

Volkswagen will reduce 7 thousand employees due to electric car development

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Volkswagen will fire 7 thousand employees in the next five years. The decision will complement the plan which was announced in 2016. Then the automaker announced a reduction of 23 thousand employees. It should be noted that it is about 19% of the company's staff in Germany. The reorganization will affect administrative positions. In other words, the company needs money for the development of electric cars. So, the automaker optimizes work processes from the head office to factories, writes WSJ. The company will also invest € 4.6 billion in the automation of office processes and the purchase of new IT systems. The new reductions will be about 6% of Volkswagen`s state in Germany and about 1% around the world. At the same time, the company will hire two thousand software developers and engineers who specialize in electric vehicles. Volkswagen's research and development costs rose to € 13.6 billion in 2018. The company estimates the cost of its electric cars line at more

Kraft Heinz will sell a dairy brand. What will happen with shares?

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American producer of packaged food products Kraft Heinz will continue selling off its brands as part of a full-scale reorganization of the business. Now the food concern is reducing its assets in order to reduce the debt burden. Kraft should restructure about $ 3billion of debt in 2020. Now the food conglomerate is considering selling its oldest business, Breakston’s, which produces cottage cheese, butter and sour cream. The assessment of the business with the possibility of its further sale will Royal Bank of Canada. The food conglomerate can get about $400 million for its curd-sour brand. Last year, Kraft Heinz announced the sale of its Canadian natural cheese company to the Italian dairy group Parmalat for $1.23 billion. The sale, as well as lower expectations for growth in sales of cheese business, led to a depreciation of $4 in February. $1 billion for the Kraft brand. The problem in the dairy industry is only one of the many problems that the food concern has rec

SoftBank and Toyota can invest $1 bn in Uber`s autopilot department

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SoftBank and other investors are negotiating with Uber about investing $1 billion in an unmanned unit of the company, sources from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times information. Reuters also named Toyota among potential investors.  According to WSJ sources, negotiations can still be terminated, but if the deal goes through, it will be announced in April 2019. In 2017, Uber spent on the development of remotely piloted cars about $750 million before cutting expenses in 2018, the newspaper writes.  The conditions of the deal involve the purchase of Uber shares, specifically issued for an unmanned unit. The company will retain control over it and use the money to finance its development, according to NYT.  Investments will help Uber attract potential investors before an IPO, during which a startup can be valued at up to $ 120 billion.  Uber and SoftBank declined to comment. A Toyota spokesman told Reuters that the company is regularly exploring various investment optio

Uber agreed to pay drivers in the US $20 million due to a claim for their labor status

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Uber Technologies has agreed to pay $ 20 million to a group of drivers that filed a lawsuit against the company in 2013. The drivers insisted that they were full-time employees of Uber, and not independent contractors, as the company considers them. So, they should have a minimum salary, medical insurance, and reimbursement of expenses related to work. In 2016, Uber was already close to settling a class action lawsuit, agreeing to pay $ 100 million. About 385,000 drivers should have received compensation, but San Francisco district judge Edward Chen considered this amount insufficient and rejected the Uber offer. In May 2018, the US Supreme Court upheld the right of US companies to enter into arbitration agreements with employees and performers prohibiting them from joining together for the class action against an employer. “We’re pleased to reach a settlement on this matter, and we’ll continue working hard to improve the quality, security, and dignity of independent work,”

NVIDIA has bought high-performance chipmaker Mellanox for $ 6.9 billion

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NVIDIA has confirmed that it had bought the Israeli chipmaker Mellanox. The deal amounted to $ 6.9 billion, and it has become the largest acquisition of the company today. NVIDIA's offer turned out to be more generous than Intel was ready to pay ($ 6 billion). Thanks to the new deal, NVIDIA will be able to better compete in the server market, which accounts for about a third of sales. Mellanox mainly manufactures high-speed Ethernet and InfiniBand chips that connect servers. Such products are used in cloud data centers and storage, as well as in high-performance supercomputers used for artificial intelligence and other types of demanding to compute. In the past quarter, NVIDIA recorded a decline in revenue of a substantial 22%. This was due to a decline in demand for crypto-currency mining cards, weak sales of the latest generation of GPUs that were available only in the expensive segment, as well as trading problems in China. Only the segment of AI and cloud computing sho

Oil has risen by 23% since January

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The oil prices growth has triggered the price rise of shares of oil companies from China and the United States. Thus, a barrel of oil has increased in price by 23%, while Chesapeake Energy’s shares have gone up by 49% since January, according to the ICE data. Futures for Brent crude went up by 1.3%, rising to $ 65.9 per barrel, on March 4. The rise in the price of products was reflected in the shares of oil producing enterprises all around the world. Thus, it is noted that securities of organizations such as Chesapeake Energy (49%), Southwestern Energy (33%) and Apache (29.5%) have shown the most growth since the beginning of the year. The cost of oil has increased due to the appearance in the media of encouraging news regarding the end of the trade conflict between China and the United States. Beijing is expected to lift sanctions on products from the States, and Washington promises to remove additional taxes on Chinese goods. So, experts believe that the solution to th

WSJ: Uber and Lyft will allow drivers to become shareholders before the IPO

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Uber Technologies and Lyft plan to offer some of their drivers a cash reward. But what is interesting that they can exchange cash for shares of companies before the first public offering on the stock exchange (IPO). The Wall Street Journal shared this information, with reference to interlocutors who are familiar with the plans of companies. As a rule, shares are distributed to company personnel or sold to large funds before entering the stock exchange. Ordinary investors rarely get this opportunity, so this is a unique opportunity for drivers, according to the newspaper`s statement. According to WSJ, Uber is going to spend on the program "hundreds of millions of dollars." Monetary rewards will be available to drivers around the world. Although not all of them will be able to spend it on the purchase of shares due to US law. The amount of remuneration will depend on the duration of cooperation and the number of executed orders. Uber has a total of 3 million drivers

The world's largest sovereign fund has suffered losses for the first time in 7 years

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The Norwegian State Pension Fund, the world's largest sovereign fund, reported a loss of 485 billion crowns amounted to $ 56.7 billion in 2018, according to Norges Bank Investment Management annual report. The fund received a loss in 2011 the last time, it was amounted to 86 bn crowns. The organization had suffered maximum losses during the 2008 financial crisis. The loss was estimated at 633 billion crowns. One of the main reasons for the current results was the fall of the crowns against many currencies in which the fund had invested before. Øystein Olsen, chair of Norges Bank, said: “Although performance was weak in 2018, the long-term return has been good and higher than the return on the benchmark index.” The market value of the fund at the end of 2018 amounted to 8.2 bn crowns (966 million dollars) compared to 8.4 billion crowns (993 million dollars) in 2017. Yngve Slyngstad, NBIM’s chief executive, said: “The fund net bought equities for 185bn crowns in fourth q

Top 5 the best-selling cars around the world

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The British agency JATO Dynamics has published a list of the most popular cars in 2018 in the world market. According to JATO Dynamics representatives, in 2018, on a global scale, 86.01 million new cars and light commercial vehicles were sold - 420 thousand less than a year earlier (-0.5%). GMOTrading  is going to tell you about the top 5 the most popular cars around the world. 5th place Nissan X-Trail is a compact crossover, it was launched in 2000 by the Japanese company Nissan on the Nissan FF-S brand platform. In 2007, the second generation was created on the Nissan C platform and launched onto the market. In 2013, the third generation was released on the CMF platform. In 2018, the automaker sold 771 thousand cars, which is 6% less than a year earlier. 4th place Toyota RAV4 is a compact crossover, launched in Japan in 1994. The first generation was positioned by Toyota as a youth car for outdoor activities, hence the origin of the name (Recreation Active Vehi