Greece is making progress in repairing its economy but it needs to do more to stop tax evaders, the International Monetary Fund said yesterday. Delivering its much-anticipated health check on the Greek economy, the IMF praised “far-reaching labour market reforms”, which have boosted competitiveness, and the shoring up of the banking system, despite ballooning bad debts on banks’ balance sheets, The Times.
Billions of pounds of investments in major UK infrastructure projects are at risk because of a rift in relations with the Chinese government. The Daily Telegraph understands that China’s sovereign wealth fund will not be able to invest in long-term British projects until a solution to the diplomatic stand-off, caused by David Cameron’s meeting with the Dalai Lama last year, has been reached. The Beijing government believes Britain needs to make amends before relations can return to normal.
Microsoft is preparing to reverse course over key elements of its Windows 8 operating system, marking one of the most prominent admissions of failure for a new mass-market consumer product since Coca-Cola’s New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago. “Key aspects” of how the software is used will be changed when Microsoft releases an updated version of the operating system this year, Tammy Reller, head of marketing and finance for the Windows business, said in an interview with The Financial Times.
BT’s 1bn pound-plus bet on sports TV could take years to pay off and depends for its success on a wholesale deal with arch-rival BSkyB, analysts have warned. BT chief executive Ian Livingston has staked part of the group’s expansion drive on the 738m pound purchase of 32 Premier League matches and a further spend of hundreds of millions of pounds on the rights to overseas football, rugby union and womens´ tennis. Striking a wholesale deal to make the channel available to BSkyB for broadcast over satellite could undermine Mr Livingston’s pitch for new broadband customers. But analysts fear the new channel will struggle to generate returns if it is restricted to subscribers for BT’s television service, The Daily Telegraph says.
China is leading an effort to water down the World Bank’s most popular research report in a test of the development institution’s new President, Jim Yong Kim. According to people close to the matter, China wants to eliminate the ranking of countries in the Doing Business report, which compares business regulations – such as the difficulty of starting a company – in 185 different nations, according to The Financial Times.
Beijing is engaged in systematic cyber spying on the US military and private businesses to acquire technology to boost military modernisation and strengthen its capacity in any regional crisis, according to the Pentagon. In its annual report to Congress on the People’s Liberation Army, the Pentagon gives new emphasis to the threat of cyber-espionage from China, an issue that has been the subject of top-level complaints to Beijing by Washington, The Financial Times reports.
