Global Market Volatility Puts Fed In Hot Seat

Sponsored by   EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW, RIGHT NOW. #IBTPulse   Global Market Volatility Puts Fed In Hot Seat Federal Reserve officials will reveal the results of their first interest-rate setting meeting of 2016 Wednesday, a month after raising rates for the first time in almost a decade. Markets are all but certain the Fed will hold off on raising rates again, and investors will be looking to see whether the bank views the volatility on the markets in recent weeks as a sign of more serious economic woes to come. Will Markets Like Facebook Earnings? Analysts expect the social media giant to announce $5.36 billion in quarterly revenue, with earnings per share at 68 cents, when it reports its fourth-quarter earnings Wednesday. If estimates are correct, Facebook would have reached $17.45 billion in revenue last year, surpassing its $12.5 billion milestone from 2014 by 40 percent. PayPal, eBay, Fiat Chrysler and Boeing are among the other companies reporting Wednesday. HSBC To Decide On Headquarters Move The bank’s leaders convene a two-day meeting in Hong Kong Wednesday, where they will consider whether to uproot the company’ s headquarters from London. Reports suggest a decision could come as early as this week. A review of the bank’s domicile was launched last year, amid concerns about the level of taxation and regulation in the U.K. Possible new bases include Hong Kong, France, the U.S. and Canada. Iran's President Visits France To Forge Business Ties President Hassan Rouhani arrives in France for a two-day visit, during which he is expected to announce deals with French firms worth billions of dollars. The deals, to be announced Thursday, are expected to include agreements with airport operators, construction firms and French carmaker Peugeot . Rouhani signed deals worth over $18 billion with Italy earlier this week. HERE'S WHAT YOU MISSED LAST NIGHT. China's Statistics Chief Faces Corruption Probe The Communist Party’s anti-corruption commission announced Tuesday that Wang Baoan, the head of the country’s statistics bureau is under investigation for “serious violations of discipline” — a term used to describe corruption. The probe casts further doubt on the veracity of China’s economic data, which is widely believed by analysts to be inflated out of political expediency. Smartphone Slowdown Hits Apple Despite setting a new all-time quarterly profit record for any U.S. public company, Apple’s fourth-quarter earnings revealed that iPhone sales were essentially flat last year — the first time sales have not grown since the first iPhone was released in 2007. With iPhone growth on a downward trajectory, analysts expect unit sales to go into negative growth territory for the first time later this year. Toyota Remains World's Top-Selling Carmaker In 2015 The Japanese automaker announced Wednesday that it sold 10.15 million vehicles in 2015, retaining its spot as the world’s top-selling automaker for the fourth straight year. While Toyota’s global sales fell 0.8 percent over 2014, the total was still higher than Volkswagen’s, which dropped to 9.9 million on the back of a massive emissions scandal, and General Motors’ 9.8 million. RBS Hit With Nearly $10B Of New Accounting Provisions Royal Bank of Scotland, Britain’s largest state-owned lender, announced fourth-quarter charges that will push the company into a full-year loss. They include a $2.2 billion provision related to U.S. mortgage-backed securities, over 500 million pounds ($716 million) to cover costs from wrongly-sold payment protection insurance, writing down the value of its private banking business by 498 million pounds ($713 million), and over 4.2 billion pounds ($6 billion) to plug a pension deficit. Shares in the company slumped in early trading in London, and have decreased about 17 percent this year.   7 Hanover Square, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10004 © 2015 IBT Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Please add pulse@ibt-mail.com to your contacts Unsubscribe | Privacy Policy