>>> What to look at today - 27th of January 2020

Deepening fears about the economic and human impact of the deadly coronavirus sent stocks, crude oil and China’s yuan tumbling Monday, and spurred haven assets higher.
Futures on Chinese shares fell more than 5% and the yuan erased this month’s trade-deal driven gains in wake of news that the virus continues to spread, with no peak in sight. Contracts on the S&P 500 Index fell more than 1% before paring losses, while Japanese equities and European futures retreated over 1%. Ten-year Treasury yields and West Texas crude both hit their lowest levels since October. The yen climbed.
“Any economic shock to China’s colossal industrial and consumption engines will spread rapidly to other countries through the increased trade and financial linkages associated with globalization,” Stephen Innes, chief Asia market strategist at Axitrader, wrote in a note Monday. “I’m starting to think cash is the right place to be for the next few weeks.”

Nikkei -2.03% Hang Seng Closed CSI Closed Shanghai Closed Shenzen Closed

Eur$ 1.1028 CNH 6.9668 CNY 6.9109 JPY 109.08 GBP 1.3065 CHF 0.9710 RUB 62.2950 WTI$ 52.96 -2.27%

S&P -0.99% EuroStoxx -1.33% FTSE -1.23% Dax -1.37% SMI

Macro :
- China’s Xi Steps in as Deadly Virus Spreads to Four Continents
- Banks Head Into Darkest Phase of the Nordic Negative-Rate Cycle
- ECB’s Newest Stimulus for Germany Is Love Bombing by Lagarde

Keep an eye on :
- AM1 FH : Ahlstrom-Munksjo Pulp Plant Closed After Gas Leak: Expressen
- AZN LN : Allergan to Sell Medications to Nestle, AstraZeneca; No Terms
- BARC LN : Banks to Ask for 4 Billion Pound Tax Cuts Post-Brexit: Telegraph
- BAYN GY : Bayer Cuts Crispr Therapeutics Stake to 6.1%, May Sell More
- BCART BB : Biocartis CFO Welten Resigns, Recruiting Process Started
- CSGN SW : FINMA Probes Board Role in Credit Suisse Spying Case: Rtrs
- DB1 GY : Deutsche Boerse: TLG Immobilien Free-Float Adjustment in SDAX
- EVK GY : Advent’s $3.3 Billion Roehm Deal Looks to Rekindle Chemical Icon
- FER SM : Ferrovial Sells Broadspectrum to Ventia for 303 Million Euros
- FCAU IM : Fiat Seeks Dismissal of GM Suit Alleging Years of Union Bribes
- GLEN LN : Vicentin is Said in Buyout Talks With Glencore, Others: Reuters
- GHE LN : Gresham House Says Performance is in Line With Expectations
- HMB SS : H&M Closes 13 Clothes Stores in Wuhan Area in China, SvD Says
- ILD FP : Iliad Completes EU1.4b Capital Increase to Finance Buyback
- LMN SW : LM Group Says in Talks With PE Groups, Others on Lastminute.com
- LAND SW : Landis+Gyr Sees FY Results at Lower End; Changes Dividend Policy
- LUPE SS : Lundin Petroleum Targets Carbon Neutrality, Changes Name
- NESN SW : Nestle Buys Zenpep from Allergan in Medical-Nutrition Boost
- NMC LN : Muddy Waters Report Hammers Billionaire’s Health Firm: QuickTake
- NOVOB DC : U.K. Advisory Agency Declines to Recommend Novo’s Obesity Drug
- UG FP : France’s Groupe PSA to Repatriate 38 People in Wuhan Area
- RNO FP : Renault Board to Meet Early This Week to Name De Meo CEO: Echos
- RNO FP : Reuters: Renault, Nissan chief engineers to meet, revive R&D projects: sources
https://t.co/KsawU00zqf https://t.co/ieEVHtdFHo
- ROG SW : Roche Submits Suppl. FDA Application for Combined Tecentriq
- ROL LN : Rotala Says Performance is in Line With Market Expectations
- SANN FW : Santhera Full Year Sales CHF27.9 Mln, -12% Y/y
- STM FP : STMicroelectronics Could Reach Revenue Goal in 2022: Corriere
- TEF SM : Telefonica Hires MS for Sale of Tech Unit Stake: Confidencial
- TNET BB : Telenet Successfully Issues New $2.3B and EU1.11B Term Loans
- TIFS LN : TI Fluid Sees Earnings in Line With Expectations
- VELO DC : Veloxis’s Last day of Trading Is Expected to Be on Feb. 24

WSJ : Europe’s Banking Regulator Paves the Way for Bank Mergers

Europe’s Banking Regulator Paves the Way for Bank Mergers
Softer stance toward tie-ups comes as sector struggles to make money against backdrop of low rates

Europe’s main banking regulator is trying to clear the path for mergers between the continent’s lenders as the belief grows that scale is the key to reviving the struggling sector, people familiar with the matter said.

The regulator—an arm of the European Central Bank that covers the largest eurozone banks—is making this softer stance toward potential tie-ups known privately, according to bankers, supervisors and analysts. Some of its officials have also publicly tackled the issue in recent speeches. It marks a departure for the regulator from its perceived stance of imposing prohibitively tough conditions on mergers.

The ECB showed an openness to work with two Spanish midsize banks, Liberbank SA and Unicaja Banco SA, during merger discussions last year, according to people familiar with the talks. The talks with the regulator revolved around whether any additional capital could be raised through the issuance of debt, rather than from shareholders, according to one of the people.

The regulator is also more open to giving some time for synergies from a merger to kick in—for example, accepting a smaller capital buffer during that period, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

The loosening comes as the eurozone’s fragmented banking sector struggles to make money. Low interest rates—which are set up by the ECB’s own monetary-policy arm—continue to eat up banks’ margins on loans, hurting their profitability and making them largely unattractive for investors. Mergers have been long touted as a possible answer to the region’s banking woes. Part of the rationale for larger European lenders is they need scale to compete with U.S. rivals that have outperformed them on their own patch since the global financial crisis. European banks’ average return on equity is around 6%, almost half that of U.S. peers.

“Somewhere in the back of their minds, the ECB realizes that the negative rates environment is weighting on profitability of the banks, and they need to do something about it,” said Jérôme Legras, head of research at Axiom Alternative Investments.

To be sure, the ECB’s ability to foster deal making in Europe’s banking sector depends on the willingness of banks to join forces. Historically that has sometimes proved challenging because of disagreements between the companies over board makeup, executive leadership and shareholder structure of the proposed merged bank.

Some bankers are also skeptical about the extent to which the ECB is willing to be flexible and whether that will be enough to trigger mergers. An official at a large European lender said while it is true the ECB is looking to be helpful, “at the end of the day they are supervisors, and supervisors are by nature very risk-averse.”

But more openness toward mergers could prove a game changer for Europe’s banking system, and could trigger several midsize mergers, particularly in the oversize domestic markets, according to analysts. Germany has over 1,500 banks, followed by more than 500 in Italy, 400 in France and 200 in Spain. Big mergers between some of the region’s larger lenders have been discussed in recent years, most prominently talks between German lenders Deutsche Bank AG and Commerzbank AG , which broke down on the cost and complexity of pulling off a merger.

“I definitely think mergers will happen, likely from the second half of this year,” said Filippo Alloatti, an analyst at Hermes Investment Management, adding that high costs for digitalization in addition to the low-rate environment are putting too much pressure on banks and forcing the ECB to act.

Key to the regulator’s flexibility is willingness to ease capital requirements for a merged entity, something that has stalled consolidation among banks because few are willing to ask shareholders to put in more money.

In the past, the ECB has taken a tough stance on the matter. In 2016, two years after the banking supervision arm was created, it imposed tough conditions for the merger of two midsize Italian banks—Banco Popolare SC and Banca Popolare di Milano Scarl. The lenders were told to shrink their board size, make additional write-downs of bad loans and raise €1 billion in fresh capital.

The managers of both lenders branded the requests as excessive and opposed them for weeks. But in the end they capitulated. “Facing a position [of the ECB] which left no alternative, we decided to meet the regulator’s requirements,” Banco Popolare’s CEO Pier Francesco Saviotti said at the time.

Since then, sizable merger activity among banks has been muted, with many bankers citing hurdles imposed by the regulator.

More recently, though, the ECB has struck a milder tone.

“I would like to dispel the perception that the ECB requires higher levels of capital from merged entities,” Andrea Enria, the head of the ECB’s banking arm, said in November.

“Our objective is to support, rather than discourage, the effective restructuring of the merged entities and ensure that the resulting business model is sustainable,” he added.

In a speech the same month, Yves Mersch, another ECB senior official, signaled the regulator could revisit its assessment criteria for mergers, including on the treatment of bad-loan levels for the combined bank.

“As a supervisor, we step up our scrutiny of merged entities, at least at the start of their life, as we recognize the operational risk challenges posed by merging complex structures. That should not lead to double-counting, though,” he said.

WSJ : Saudi Prince Courted Amazon’s Bezos Before Bitter Split

Saudi Prince Courted Amazon’s Bezos Before Bitter Split
Pair worked cordially to try to establish an Amazon presence in kingdom before rift over alleged phone hacking

Through much of 2018, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -1.22% founder Jeff Bezos and tech-savvy Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seemed to be hitting it off.

Texting over WhatsApp about a plan for Amazon to build a huge data center in Saudi Arabia, the men forged a cordial and mutually beneficial relationship. “It is very important for me, my friend, that you come to Saudi during the future investment Forum and we announce this $2.8B Vision 2030 partnership,” the prince messaged Mr. Bezos on Sept. 9, 2018, according to a review of texts by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the situation.

Amazon stood to gain broader access to the Middle Eastern market. Prince Mohammed could be aided in his efforts to reform the Saudi economy as well as burnish his personal brand.

Now, one of the world’s richest men and one of the most powerful princes are archenemies, each accusing the other of betrayal.

Over the course of 2018, Prince Mohammed grew frustrated as the Bezos-owned Washington Post published critical columns by Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Bezos was deeply disturbed after men working for the prince murdered Mr. Khashoggi that October, said people familiar with the situation.

But the feud didn’t erupt into a public spectacle until last week, with the surfacing of a report commissioned by Mr. Bezos that said—with “medium-to-high confidence”—that Prince Mohammed had installed spyware on Mr. Bezos’ phone via a WhatsApp message in May 2018.

The Saudi government denies that the prince hacked Mr. Bezos’ phone. The Journal has reported that Saudi officials close to the crown prince said they were aware of a plan to compromise Mr. Bezos’ phone, though not that an attack actually happened.

William Isaacson, a lawyer for Mr. Bezos, declined to comment for this article, as did representatives for the Saudi government in Riyadh and Washington. An Amazon spokesman declined to comment on details of the data-center plan.

Later in 2018, the National Enquirer received embarrassing texts and photos of the then-married Mr. Bezos and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, and published some of them in January 2019. Mr. Bezos has said there was Saudi involvement in the matter, an assertion the Enquirer and the Saudi government disputed.

The Journal has reported that the Enquirer paid $200,000 to buy the racy texts and photos from Ms. Sanchez’s brother Michael Sanchez, according to people familiar with the matter, and that federal prosecutors have evidence indicating Ms. Sanchez had given him the material.

Ms. Sanchez hasn’t responded to requests for comment. Mr. Sanchez said in an emailed statement: “With spoon-fed lies and half-truths, Wall Street Journal keeps getting it wrong.”

It is a remarkable show of public animosity between two men who seemed to have aligned interests when they met in 2016.

Prince Mohammed had taken over efforts to remake the Saudi economy, a position he gained after his father, Salman, became king in 2015. The prince told friends and acquaintances that he sees himself in the mold of tech-company founders like Steve Jobs and Mr. Bezos— men who built business empires through visionary leadership and supreme self confidence.

For several years, Prince Mohammed has met with investors, money managers and chief executives to explain his vision. Among his big initiatives was a $500 billion tech-focused city called NEOM that he planned to build along the Red Sea.

In confidential planning documents the Journal reviewed, consultants for the Saudi government outlined “tailor-made incentives” to woo Amazon as a major part of the project, including government funding and 99 years of free rent.

Many Western business leaders wanted the prince to invest Saudi money in their operations, people familiar with the meetings said. Amazon was one of the few willing to invest a large amount of money in Saudi Arabia. The data center would serve Amazon customers across the region, according to people in the Gulf and the U.S. familiar with the talks.

The two men had an April 2018 dinner in Los Angeles during a U.S. tour the prince made. For Prince Mohammed, it would be among the first major investments in the kingdom by a Western tech company, and one of the first times a big foreign company would choose Saudi Arabia, rather than traditionally business-friendly locations like Dubai or Abu Dhabi, as a Mideast hub.

The details were negotiated by lower-level teams. But the prince and Mr. Bezos kept in touch about the project on a high level over WhatsApp, people familiar with the project said.

WhatsApp was a key tool of the young prince’s global charm campaign. In his first few years as crown prince, he handed out his WhatsApp contact information to visiting dignitaries, businessmen, academics and some journalists so often that his phone streamed messages day and night, people who interacted with the prince said.

Prince Mohammed would go through the messages every day, those people said. Receiving a response was a surprise for Americans accustomed to doing business in the Gulf, where senior princes were typically aloof.

Talks about a data-center project that could cost $2 billion or more were under way when Prince Mohammed and Mr. Bezos began communicating over WhatsApp in spring 2018, the people familiar with the matter said. Saudi officials believed Amazon was willing to commit up to $4 billion to the project, said people involved in the talks.

Yet the prince at points griped to Mr. Bezos about Amazon’s earlier business decisions in the region—it had bought an e-commerce company in 2017 that competed with a business co-owned by the Saudi sovereign-wealth fund, and announced a deal to build a data center in neighboring Bahrain.

“I was very disappointed” to hear about the Bahrain deal, the prince texted Mr. Bezos, according to the people familiar with the exchanges. He wrote that Amazon’s decision not to partner with Saudi Arabia from the get-go “has pushed” Saudi Arabia to compete in e-commerce with Amazon.

Still, the prince continued to send enthusiastic messages through the summer of 2018 about Amazon’s eventual arrival in the kingdom, these people said.

It turns out the prince’s messages to Mr. Bezos were somewhat misleading.

Prince Mohammed’s security adviser, Musaid al Aiban, had already frozen the data-center deal because Amazon.com wouldn’t allow Saudi intelligence and law enforcement access to the data as part of the discussions, people familiar with the matter said.

On April 17, 2018, less than two weeks after the prince and the CEO had dinner in Los Angeles, Mr. Aiban told officials working on the deal not to complete it—and also not to tell Amazon it was being held up. Prince Mohammed was apprised of this strategy, according to these officials.

“Never say no publicly. We just keep stalling and cite bureaucratic delays,” said an adviser for the government who worked on the project.

Multiple efforts to reach Mr. Aiban through media representatives of the Saudi government were unsuccessful.

It was important not to alienate Mr. Bezos because Prince Mohammed wanted him to attend the Riyadh financial conference later in the year. Nicknamed “Davos in the Desert,” it was the prince’s opportunity to trumpet, domestically and abroad, his alliances with the world’s business and technology leaders.

Through the summer of 2018, the prince encouraged Mr. Bezos to come to the October conference, text messages show. It isn’t clear whether Mr. Bezos ever formally committed to attending.

Then, on Oct. 2, 2018, Mr. Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist, entered the Saudi embassy in Istanbul and never emerged. The Post wrote a number of investigative articles and editorials about the murder, many blaming Prince Mohammed.

For days, Saudi Arabia issued statements denying involvement only to be contradicted by information gathered by Turkey, partially through recordings inside the Saudi embassy, that indicated Mr. Khashoggi was killed by Saudi operatives.

Later that month, Saudi Arabia said officials of its government killed Mr. Khashoggi in a rogue operation, and tried to dampen international outrage by announcing its own investigation. The Central Intelligence Agency concluded that the killing was carried out under the prince’s orders, U.S. officials said. Saudi Arabia has denied the prince had any prior knowledge.

In the aftermath of the Khashoggi killing, government officials and executives from around the world pulled out of the Riyadh conference, including Mr. Bezos.

Around that time, National Enquirer employees got a tip about Mr. Bezos’ affair and began tailing him, the Journal has reported. In January 2019, Mr. Bezos revealed he was getting divorced, knowing that the Enquirer was ready to publish an article about his affair. The Enquirer subsequently threatened to publish more racy texts and photos unless Mr. Bezos publicly said he had no evidence the tabloid had targeted him for political reasons.

Mr. Bezos refused the Enquirer’s demand.

It wasn’t until last Wednesday that details of the alleged Saudi hack of Mr. Bezos’ iPhone became public, after United Nations officials called for an investigation of the incident and summarized the report by Mr. Bezos’ consultants.

The consultant’s report has spurred questions among cybersecurity experts, who said it relied heavily on circumstantial evidence to make the case that a WhatsApp account associated with Prince Mohammed was probably used to hack into Mr. Bezos’ phone.

The consultants weren’t able to figure out if information from Mr. Bezos’s phone was linked to the photos and texts that ended up with the Enquirer.

FT : China’s top lithium producer struggles under debt load

China’s top lithium producer struggles under debt load
Tianqi Lithium under pressure to repay bank loan as prices slump

China’s largest lithium producer is struggling to repay debt that helped finance an aggressive overseas expansion, the latest Chinese company to hit setbacks going global.

Tianqi Lithium is facing mounting pressure to repay part of a $3.5bn loan from state-owned Citic Bank this year, which it used to buy a 24 per cent stake in Chilean lithium producer SQM in May 2018.

The global lithium market has been hit by rising supply from new mines and a cut in subsidies to buyers of electric cars in China, the world’s largest market. Prices for lithium carbonate have fallen more than 30 per cent over the past year, leading to mounting losses for the industry.

Tianqi raised Rmb2.93bn ($424m) in a December rights issue on the Shenzhen stock exchange, less than half the Rmb7bn it had targeted to pay down the Citic loan. A total of $2.2bn is due to be repaid to the bank in November, according to the company.

“It was a bad decision done in kind of a bubble mentality,” Joe Lowry, a lithium consultant, said about Tianqi’s purchase of the SQM stake. “But I don’t think the government is going to let them go down given the criticality of [lithium] raw material supply. That would be like wiping out half of China’s supply, which would not be a good thing for China.”

Tianqi joins a growing cohort of Chinese companies that made debt-fuelled overseas acquisitions only to falter under the strain of the repayments in the months and years to follow.

Aggressive Chinese acquirers such as Shandong Ruyi and Zhonghong Zhuoye have been forced to back out of deals or sell recently purchased assets to appease creditors.

By late last year Chinese companies had for the first time on record become net sellers of global assets, as groups such as HNA and Anbang Insurance were forced to offload global portfolios.

Founded in 2004 in the county-level city of Shehong in Sichuan by chairman Jiang Weiping after he bought a bankrupt local government lithium company, Tianqi has expanded rapidly to become one of the world’s largest producers supplying battery companies such as LG Chem.

A total of 40 per cent of the new shares issued in the rights issue last month were bought by the founder’s wife Zhang Jing and Mr Jiang’s son-in-law.

In addition to its stake in SQM, Tianqi owns 51 per cent of Australia’s largest lithium mine, Greenbushes, and last year completed a $400m lithium hydroxide processing plant outside Perth.

“Regarding the acquisition debt, the board is paying great attention to this,” Tianqi Lithium said in a statement. “The company is currently discussing the feasibility of various financing options, and actively expanding various financing channels, to ensure repayment of the loan.”

Rating agency Moody’s last month cut its rating on Tianqi to B1 From Ba3, saying its move reflected the “uncertainty related to Tianqi Lithium’s refinancing plans, weak liquidity position and weak operations”.

Prices for Tianqi Lithium’s $300 bond due in 2022 fell 13 per cent this week to trade at 66 cents on the dollar.

However, Tianqi struck an upbeat note about the lithium market in its Chinese new year message to staff, saying that “in the chill after the hype has subsided, the seeds of rational recovery have already broken through and sprouted”.

>>> Weekend Papers Summary

Weekend Papers Summary

NYT (Saturday): House Democrats concluded their arguments against Donald Trump Friday by portraying his pressure campaign on Ukraine as part of a dangerous pattern of Russian appeasement that demanded his removal from office; related story says the Democrats do not appear to have won over the handful of Republicans who hold the key to gaining access to witnesses and documents that could cement their case; Democratic voters “are splintered across generational, racial and ideological lines, prompting some liberals to express reluctance about rallying behind a moderate presidential nominee, and those closer to the political middle to voice unease with a progressive standard-bearer”; The Environmental Protection Agency under Trump has made it easier for cities to continue to dump raw sewage into rivers by letting them delay or otherwise change federally imposed fixes to their sewer systems; A huge crowd of Iraqis gathered on the streets of Baghdad Friday to protest the US military presence at the behest of a leading populist cleric and armed forces with ties to Iran; A second patient in the US—a woman in her 60s who traveled to Wuhan, China and returned to Chicago—is infected with the Wuhan coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; The Trump administration said the Department of Health and Human Services would withhold federal money from California if the state does not drop during the next 30 days its requirement that private insurers cover abortions; London’s police department plans to begin using facial recognition to detect criminal suspects with video cameras as they walk the streets, a level of surveillance that is rare outside China; The Trump administration is moving quickly to hold China to its promise to protect American intellectual property, ratcheting up searches for counterfeit goods at ports and increasing pressure on e-commerce companies to halt online sales of Chinese knockoffs; (Sunday): Trump’s legal defense team mounted an aggressive offense Saturday in the Senate impeachment trial by claiming Democratic accusers were partisan witch-hunters trying to remove him from office because they could not beat him at the ballot box; Bernie Sanders leads Democratic presidential rivals in Iowa just over a week before the state’s caucuses, consolidating support from liberals and benefiting from divisions among moderates who are clustered behind him, according to a NYT/Siena College poll of likely caucusgoers; In China, markets that sell meat, fruits, and vegetables are again the source of an epidemic that has spread fear, challenged the Communist Party bureaucracy and exposed the epidemiological risks of places where humans and wildlife converge; The Des Moines Register, Iowa’s largest and most influential paper, endorsed Senator Elizabeth Warren for the Democratic presidential nomination on Saturday, calling her “the best leader for these times”; A Trump administration rule change, long in the making, is about to take effect, and by the administration’s own estimates, nearly 700,000 people across the country will be dropped from the food-stamp rolls; Sunday Business: Lead story says that stock traders are accused of siphoning $60B from European state coffers using a monetary maneuver called “cum-ex trading” to avoid double taxation of investment profits—and Germany is the first country to try to get its money back.

WSJ (Weekend): Front page story reports “The Commerce Department has withdrawn proposed regulations making it harder for U.S. companies to sell to Huawei from their overseas facilities after objections from the Pentagon and the Treasury Department”; China’s investment of billions in the frontiers of modern science is being put to the test by the coronavirus outbreak, an elementary health challenge, and its performance seems to be lagging based on early indications; The mortgage market in 2019 had its best year since the height of the pre-crisis boom, the latest sign that housing is firming up after showing signs of weakness early last year; US oil prices fell 7.5%, their sharpest weekly move lower since July, sparked by fears that a deadly virus spreading throughout China and other countries will hurt demand; Most planes and helicopters flying in the US must now be equipped with transponders that allow their movements to be traced with GPS coordinates, a move that should make tracking faster and more accurate than radar, and allow more planes in the air; A report by FTI that claimed Saudi Arabia likely hacked Jeff Bezos’ phone has spurred questions among cybersecurity experts who say the audit left several major technical questions unexplained and in need of more examination; Secretary of State Pompeo will travel next week to Kiev for meetings with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and other officials, part of a rescheduled trip to Europe and Central Asia; +/- DIS, MCD: Disney will temporarily close its Disneyland and Disneytown parks in Shanghai, while McDonald’s has closed stores in Wuhan, as the death toll from China’s spreading coronavirus continues to rise; +/- FB: As lawmakers continue to hash out the EU’s extensive privacy rules, a German court ruled that some user terms set by the social site violated consumer-data protection law; The Dow Jones Transportation Average—which tracks the performance of 20 large US airlines, truckers, railroads, and shippers—is 4.4% below its record from September 14, 2018, while during the same period, the DJIA has risen 11%; H.O.T.S.: TSLA’s share price reflects that unlike Volkswagen or GM, “Elon Musk’s car maker has little to lose in the journey to a greener future”; INTC’s production arms race with TSM grows more expensive, even as sales to the growing data-center sector increase; The zero-commission trend has led online brokerage customers to trade more and park more cash.

FT (Weekend): Front page story on the coronavirus outbreak says that while the CDC has not complained publicly about a lack of co-operation with its Chinese counterparts, some experts are unhappy with the information they’re receiving from China on who is getting infected, and how; London’s decision to start using facial recognition technology in security cameras comes as the European Commission is considering a ban on the technology across the bloc for five years to allow policymakers to create a regulatory framework; Brussels succeeded in preventing Washington from throwing a wrench in the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement system, forging an alliance with 16 countries to work around a US block on judicial appointments; The EU will demand the right to rapidly sanction the UK for breaching any future deals in a bid to prevent “competitive undercutting or freeriding” by British companies, according to documents seen by the FT; Big Read piece on the coronavirus in China says the capacity of the Chinese system to marshal resources and give orders has been clear in Wuhan and its surrounding cities, but there may be downsides to president Xi Jinping’s style of leadership for crisis management; Lex Column: The decision by BCS chief Jes Staley to set a course for 10 percent return on equity by the end of 2020 may rankle some of staff, but he is right to hold his line; Rallies after outbreaks during the past two decades, from avian flu to Ebola, have been followed by corrections; “Watching the fight between XRX and HPQ can feel a lot like watching a pair of bickering old-timers”; Comment: The allied bombing of Dresden in World War II continues to reverberate 75 years afterwards, says PW Singer, and provide lessons for the current use of drones to carry out attacks without the use of pilots in planes.

NY POST (Saturday): The Chinese stock market sank to a record low this week as the deadly coronavirus outbreak panicked investors; An Israeli startup called GalaPro is partnering with Epson’s Moverio to develop smart glasses to help hearing impaired theatergoers; (Sunday): The mayor of Paris canceled the city’s Chinese Lunar New Year parade, set to take place at the Place de la République, amid concerns over the deadly coronavirus outbreak.