Business

While it wasn't exactly breaking news, with consensus having long ago decided that Halliburton and Baker Hughes would ultimately call off their ill-timed $28 billion merger announced in late 2014 following recurring media leaks, overnight the two companies officially ended speculation when they announced that the contested merger would be called off, resulting in a $3.5 billion termination fee payable to Baker Hughes. And with its immediate future somewhat in limbo, moments ago Baker Hughes outlined its "path for the future."

It included the following key steps:

It has been a busy weekend for mostly negative newsflow.

The Panama Papers leak was for appetizers. The real leak, one which took place quietly and under the radar a few days ago, and may have exposed far more wealthy and important individuals, was that of the Qatar National Bank - the Middle East's largest lender by assets - where a massive 1.5 GB data dump posted online last week exposed the personal data of thousands of clients.

What a bunch of worry warts.

Just because the Fed and Wall Street have driven home ownership rates to an all-time low and increased the number of renters to an all-time high through their warped monetary schemes, while driving rents up at an annual pace of over 8%, why worry?

 

Just because your monthly rent is at an all-time high, while real median household income is at the same level it was in 1989, why worry?

 

Just two days after Deutsche Bank fired the head of its "integrity committee", Georg Thoma who had been originally tasked with clearing up the bank's past scandals, because according to DB's vice chairman Alfred Herling, Thoma had been "overzealous" and "goes too far when he demands ever wider investigations and more and more lawyers come marching up", today the UK financial watchdog agency FCA announced that Germany's biggest bank has "serious" and "systemic" failings in its controls against money laundering, terrorist financing and sanctions, the Financial Times reported.