LONDON, Aug 11 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Entain (ENT.L) is on a dealmaking spree. Jette Nygaard-Andersen, chief executive of the $10 billion UK bookie, has bought five companies this year for over $1 billion in total. Her swoop for Croatia’s SuperSport, announced on Thursday, exemplifies the logic. Entain wants to plant flags across the map so that a regulatory crackdown in one country, like the United Kingdom, makes less overall difference. There are also savings in switching smaller bookies’ systems for Entain’s. Investors bid the Ladbrokes owner’s shares up by more than 5%.

The question is what this all means for Entain’s M&A dance with perennial $14 billion suitor MGM Resorts International (MGM.N), with which it has a U.S. sports-betting joint venture. MGM would like to control its own destiny in that burgeoning market and get its hands on Entain’s technology. But the UK group rebuffed its advances last year. At current market prices, and assuming MGM paid a 20%...

The U.S. sanctioning of a prominent cryptocurrency platform this week exposed technical gaps in the government’s ability to prevent criminals, national adversaries and extremist groups from using the services to launder money and finance their operations, analysts said.

Among the central challenges: Cryptocurrency platforms are increasingly run by computer code distributed across

MILAN, Aug 11 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Italy’s likely next government has some big spending plans. A coalition of rightist parties looks poised to win general elections in September, making Giorgia Meloni of the nationalist Brothers of Italy party prime minister. High public debt and European Union vigilance will puncture the group’s wildest trial balloons.

The abrupt fall of Mario Draghi’s executive last month paves the way for yet another Italian government. An alliance including Brothers of Italy, the anti-immigration League and ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia would command 49% of votes, opinion polls show, well ahead of its divided political rivals. Meloni’s party, which has roots in post-war neo-fascism, opposed Draghi’s agenda and has a eurosceptic past, may capture 24% of the vote.

High on the alliance’s agenda is slashing taxes to boost consumer demand. While the group has yet to publish an official manifesto, its plans include extending a flat...

LONDON, Aug 11 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Entain (ENT.L) is on a dealmaking spree. Jette Nygaard-Andersen, chief executive of the $10 billion UK bookie, has bought five companies this year for over $1 billion in total. Her swoop for Croatia’s SuperSport, announced on Thursday, exemplifies the logic. Entain wants to plant flags across the map so that a regulatory crackdown in one country, like the United Kingdom, makes less overall difference. There are also savings in switching smaller bookies’ systems for Entain’s. Investors bid the Ladbrokes owner’s shares up by more than 5%.

The question is what this all means for Entain’s M&A dance with perennial $14 billion suitor MGM Resorts International (MGM.N), with which it has a U.S. sports-betting joint venture. MGM would like to control its own destiny in that burgeoning market and get its hands on Entain’s technology. But the UK group rebuffed its advances last year. At current market prices, and assuming MGM paid a 20%...

China may be ready to curb some of the excess liquidity sloshing in the banking system as it turns its focus to mitigating risks in the financial industry.

The first sign of that could come at Monday’s medium-term lending facility operation. Eight out of 12 economists and analysts polled by Bloomberg are forecasting that the People’s Bank of China will withdraw cash through MLF for the first time this year by offering less cash than the 600 billion yuan ($89 billion) maturing this month. The median estimate is for a 400 billion yuan injection, and all of those polled expect the rate to be kept unchanged.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on Thursday cut its forecast for oil-demand growth in 2022, citing expectations for a resurgence of COVID-19 restrictions and continued geopolitical ructions.

In its monthly report, OPEC cut its estimate of 2022 demand growth to 3.1 million barrels a day from a previous forecast of 3.4 million barrels a day, or mb/d. OPEC described the outlook as still healthy, with total oil demand expected to average around 100 mb/d in 2022.

OPEC...

July was a tremendous month for stocks, it was also a mediocre (at best) month for hedge funds which not only underperform the S&P when stocks slide (as they did during the crashes of 2020 and early this year), but also underperform the broader market during sharp squeezes like the one that took place in July, prompting some to ask just what is the point of paying someone 2 and 20 to some overweight billionaire to always underperform.

The question of hedge fund utility becomes that much more pressing when one reads in the latest Goldman Sachs Prime Services hedge fund weekly report that while the GS Equity Fundamental L/S Performance Estimate rose +0.57% between 7/22 and 7/28 (roughly a third the performance of broader - and free - MSCI World TR +1.74%), this return was driven almost entirely by beta of +0.56% (i.e., market exposure), with alpha of just +0.01%.

In other words, not only can't hedge funds generate alpha, they can't even keep up with the market's...

As the NA session begins, the NZD is the strongest and the GBP is the weakest. Yesterday, the USD fell sharply after the weaker than expected CPI report. The USD is following that move lower with another modest decline today ahead of the PPI data and the US initial jobless claims. The PPI is expected to rise by 0.2% vs 1.1% last month with ex food and energy up 0.4%. The YoY headline number is expected to fall to 10.4% from 11.3%, with the ex food and energy falling to 7.6% from 8.2%.

Stocks are higher. Disney leads the Dow with a gain up to $122.70 vs a close of $112.43 after reporting better earnings and revenues (and subscriptions). They also announced a new price increase. The major indices soared yesterday after the better CPI data.

Hello. Today we look at the biggest victims of still-soaring rents, Japan’s new digitization push, and a four-step proposal to overhaul Ukraine’s economic policies.

The latest US inflation report, out Wednesday, showed a welcome deceleration from the biggest surge in the cost of living since the early 1980s. But it offered little respite to millions whose purchasing power continues to drop.

The business, which operates 14 manufacturing facilities in the US, Canada and Italy plus 19 distribution centers, is expected to generate about $1.6 billion in net sales this year and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $70 million, according to a statement Thursday.

Interest in a windfall tax on electricity generators has reemerged after energy industry executives met the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, and the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Thursday. The former chancellor Rishi Sunak introduced a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas operators in May. Here, we examine the issue.

“Malaysia’s labour market continues its steady march towards full recovery with the number of employed persons and unemployment rate improving further. Total number of employed persons rose for the 11th month by 36.3k to 15.94mn in Jun. The non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate edged lower to 3.8% while the seasonally adjusted rate fell to 3.6%, a shade above the prepandemic unemployment rate of 3.3%.”

“Employment gains recorded in the services sector particularly in food & beverages, wholesale & retail trade, and administrative & support services activities. Agriculture, manufacturing and construction sectors also saw job gains while the mining & quarrying sector recorded further declines in employment. The worker segment that is temporarily not working but had jobs to return to declined further to 87.8k (vs 801.1k in Jun 2021). Workers who are unemployed for more than 12 months also eased to 35.0k or 6.6% of total actively unemployed (vs 62.9k or...