Asia

In a major shakeup at one of the largest US industrial conglomerates, General Electric said Monday Jeff Immelt, 61, would step down as CEO and Chairman, a move that had been expected by many. Immelt will remain Chairman of the Board through his retirement from the company on December 31, 2017.

John Flannery, 55, the company’s current president and CEO of GE Healthcare, will take over as companywide CEO effective August 1, concluding a 16 years period during which the stock price of GE has barely budged.

First the bad news: following Friday's "tech wreck" European equity markets have opened lower, with the Stoxx 600 sliding 0.9% and back under the 50DMA for the first time since December, dragged by selloff in tech shares, mirroring Asian markets as Friday’s "FAAMG" volatility in U.S. markets spreads globally, battering shares from South Korea to the Netherlands.

"Triple Threat Thursday" is now a distant memory, with both the ECB and Comey testimony "non-events" for the market, although the UK general election was a shocker in which contrary to expectations, Theresa May lost her majority in Parliament, sending sterling tumbling overnight and prompting even more confusion about the UK's political fate and the future of Brexit. That however did not spook risk assets, and on Friday morning, European stocks gained with Asian stocks little changed, while S&P500 futures were set for new all time highs. Just like after Brexit, it was U.K.

Viruses, violent conflicts and a host of other regional calamities helped revive peoples’ desire to migrate permanently to another country between the years 2013 and 2016 as the number of potential migrants climbed to 710 million, according to a Gallup poll.

Paul Singer just became the latest investing luminary to warn that the unprecedented monetary stimulus adopted by the Federal Reserve and other major central banks in Europe and Asia has elevated market risks to their highest levels since before the great financial crisis.

“I am very concerned about where we are,” Singer said Wednesday at the Bloomberg Invest New York summit.