Goldman's Bond Sale Fees of $600m from Questionable 1MDB Transaction Raises Questions

Goldman Sachs, having raised three large bond offerings for 1Malaysia Development Berhad. the country's sovereign wealth fund, is now facing the prosecution of 17 current and former employees, who were directors of three Goldman's subsidiaries at the time.

The bank bagged $600m in fees. The scandal also hit Malaysia's former Prime Minister Najib Razak  who has been hit with corruption charges. Mubadala Investment Company has suspended dealings with Goldman as a result of the investigations.

1MDB is now insolvent. It started out as a fund to spur development in Malaysia's Terengganu State, whose main economic centre is Kuala Terengganu.

AMD Second Generation Epyc Attacks Intel Xeon

AMD unleashed its new second generation Epyc chip, aimed at Intel Xeon's data center processing market share (for cloud service providers) under the tagline "New Leader. New Rules". AMD are claiming 1.8x-2x performance advantage over Xeon. "Big Data Analytics" is another application area that Epyc is looking to grab. Epyc uses the AMD Infinity Architecture under the hood.

Who were the Best Fund Promoters in H1 2019 according to Lipper?

According to Lipper (an investment data firm founded in 1973 now owned by Thomson Reuters/Refintiv), the "best" fund promoter in H1 2019 was AXA.

AXA boasted net sales of 28.6 billion euro.

Blackrock came in second place with 23.1 billion euro, with PIMCO third at 23 billion euro.

Vanguard, who espouse the "four principles", came in at 9.9bn euros, less than 50% of PIMCOs sales.

London takes on Geneva as Schroders Buys Majority Stake in Impact Investing Manager Blue Orchard

Schroders (based in London) has bought a majority stake in impact investing specialist Blue Orchard ("where financial returns meet social and environmental impact"), based in Geneva, which manages $3.5bn in assets, in credit, PE and sustainable infrastructure, for an undisclosed sum. Robeco SAM is another player in the once-niche impact investing space.

Blue Orchard was founded by two bankers who are no longer with the firm, Jean-Philippe de Schrevel and Melchior de Muralt, a Swiss private banker. Chairman Peter Fanconi and CEO Patrick Scheurle will stay with Blue Orchard post Schroder-acquisition.

Facebook Lands on $5bn Settlement with FTC

Facebook's stock dipped in June when the market learned the Federal Trade Commission was investigating the company. This is linked to deceiving users that they could control the privacy of their information. "Facebook undermined consumers' choices" said Joe Simons, FTC Chairman.

Amazon Enters EdTech Market with Indian Test Prep App

The app which is in beta targets the IIT JEE or Joint Entrance Examination which is a prerequisite for entering the Indian Institutes of Technology (and is also used by other institutions such as Indian Institute to Science) has been launched by Amazon.

How are Markets doing YTD 2019 (as of 13 July 2019)?

S&P 500 is up 500 points from the start of the year (+20%) [2510, 3013]
SX5E is also up 500 points from the start of they year, though lower percentage gain (+17%) [2993,3497].
DAX which closely follows SX5E is up 1743 points, again a lower percentage gain (+16%) [10580, 12323].
GSCI is up 15% but it was impacted by a late May sell off followed by recovery. [377,434].