Fixed income

It’s been over two weeks since the last ever Air Berlin flight landed on October 27th and anyone who has bought domestic tickets since then has almost certainly noticed the difference.
Passengers flying domestically are paying on average 32.5 percent more for short haul flights compared to four weeks ago, according to an analysis carried out by MyDealz.de. The shopping portal analyzed prices on 25 short and medium haul routes in October and again in November before coming to its conclusions.

Swiss digital payment technology company SIX is reorganizing its business to improve its ability to compete with startups. The company, which sells virtual cards among other products, will merge its exchange execution and post-trading areas into one unit, and will separate its card acquiring unit from the rest of its payments business and seek a "partner" to operate the acquiring business.

China’s financial services sector will be almost entirely open to foreign players in the next five years, China’s deputy finance minister Zhu Guangyao said on Friday.

The new rules, unveiled at a government briefing on Friday, will give global financial companies unprecedented access to the world’s second-largest economy. Today’s announcement follows statements by Chinese authorities on Thursday that restrictions in the country’s banking and financial sector would soon be eased, as Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with US President Trump as part of Trump’s Asia visit.

Luxury goods maker Hermes said Wednesday that sales had accelerated during the third quarter across all its major markets and notably in its two biggest regions of Europe and Asia.

Hermes said revenues were up by 6.4 percent at €1.337 billion ($1.5 billion) in the period from July to September. The result was ahead of analysts’ average expectations of an about 8.5% revenues increase, as demand for the group’s scarves, bags and clothes accelerated since the previous quarter when sales rose 8.3%.

Amazon on Wednesday unveiled an augmented reality feature in its iOS shopping app that shows customers a 3-D rendering of how a given product will look in their home or workspace before they order it.

AR View offers the ability to view thousands of products for the home or office Рincluding furniture, electronics, toys, games, home d̩cor and more Рin augmented reality.

Swiss bank Credit Suisse posted a near six-fold year-on-year rise in third-quarter net profit on Thursday, beating analyst expectations amid an ongoing restructuring plan. Switzerland’s second-largest bank reported 244 million Swiss francs ($244 million) in third-quarter net profit. The results mark the first time the lender has posted three consecutive profitable quarters under the guidance of CEO Tidjane Thiam. It was also significantly above the 41 million Swiss francs reported for the same period last year.

Every company and organization has a never ending task – to reduce costs, to concur price volatility for the commodities and inputs. What do we do when presented with the free commodity? Are we ready to maximize the potential of the 21st Century commodity – data? Picking Alpha has started a search for answers from the European Commission, who generated the idea of free data to be available for the whole world, through it’s massive Space program – Copernicus.

Banking giant HSBC has reported pre-tax quarterly profits of $4.6bn (£3.5bn) for the three months to the end of September.
The result marks a huge 448% increase from $843m posted in the same period a year ago.
With one-off costs and currency impacts stripped out, HSBC posted a $3.8bn leap in pre-tax profits to $4.6bn for the third quarter, as it made a one-off loss on the sale of a business in Brazil last year.