US tightens visas 😓
Ad revenue hit, Asia attracts investors, and China exodus picks up.
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Stock market summary: 😍
US - S&P 500 up 0.43% 🔼
India - Sensex up 1.49% 🔼
Abu Dhabi's Mubadala thinks about expansion 📈
Mubadala investment Co. the state owned investment fund of Abu Dhabi is planning to expand its portfolios in the Asian region. These decisions come a week after Mubadala invested $1.2 Billion in RIL’s Jio in exchange for a sweet 1.85% stake.
The middle eastern entity so far has 9% of its portfolio invested in Asia already and about 38% in the United States.
The fund manages $232 Billion in assets and is interested in sectors including medical technology, agricultural tech, AI and life sciences.
With western consumer technology markets now entering stages of maturity, investors are looking at Asia and other emerging economies for high growth opportunities.
Google’s US ad revenue expected to take a hit 😕
Independent agency eMarketer gave Google Inc. a harsh blow claiming that the internet company’s US advertising revenue will drop 5.3% this year, as brands refrain from spending during the pandemic.
Google is expected to make $39.58 Billion in US ad revenues this year as compared to $41.8 Billion last year. The decline is mainly speculated to be because of Google’s heavy reliance on the travel industry advertisements which is one of the hardest hit sectors.
Pre-pandemic, analysts were expecting Google’s ad revenue to rise by almost 13% for this year. While long term the digital ad market is only going to grow, the near term impact may hurt Google’s stock.
Trump suspends issuance of new H-1B Visas 🚫
The Trump Administration on Monday signed an order to suspend employment based visas including J-1, H-1B and H-2B, and other work based green cards.
The suspension will remain in place until the end of this year and will not immediately affect workers already in the US.
The order will suspend H-1B visas for high skilled workers, H-2B visas for non agricultural seasonal workers, J-1 visas for exchange visitors and L-1 visas used by companies to internally transfer foreign employees to the US. Also, a temporary ban that curtails some foreigners from getting green cards is enforced.
Wall Street Journal estimates that this order will bar over 525,000 people from entering the US which includes 170,000 green card holders. Trump reasoned it out by saying that this step was essential to ensure employment opportunities to millions of Americans who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic.
This decision was promptly criticized by various businessmen, CEOs, workers, as well as politicians as regressive and short sighted.
America has historically been the land of immigrants and the current administration’s moves to tighten borders appear directly in conflict with that spirit.
RIL to hold its first virtual AGM 🖥️
Following other technology giants and Wall Street counterparts, India’s RIL is breaking its yearly tradition of holding the annual general meetings and is going virtual this time around, thanks to the pandemic.
This will be RIL’s 43rd Annual general meeting and will be held on July 15 at 2 PM.
The company is expecting to see a higher turnout this year as the AGM is being moved online.
This year’s meeting is quite anticipated by analysts, investors and the general public since a debt-free RIL is imagined to get a lot more aggressive in technology services. Also, people are curious to hear more about their plans with Jio.
Previously, TCS, India’s largest IT company by revenue, held a virtual AGM on June 11.
Tweet of the day -
The United States has come out with one of its harshest push backs against skilled immigrants. For almost a century some of the brightest minds have moved west seeking better prospects. That now looks harder than ever to pull off.
This might work towards India’s benefit as perhaps this could lead to us not losing our best talent to western nations. Also, economically India is at an inflection point. Despite pandemic induced short term economic woes, the internet services and other sectors are booming and all the talent that stays back could end up starting companies here or embarking on research endeavors right inside our borders.
Interesting times ahead for Indian innovation.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
😳 Drugs worth 230 cr washed ashore in Mallapuram - somebadddy gonna get a hurt a real bad. Nearly 230 crores worth of crystal meth packed in Chinese tea packets has washed ashore Tamil Nadu’s coast in what looks like a delivery gone wrong. Authorities are still struggling to trace its origins.
👎 Tiktokers sink Trump's rally - LOL. Apparently, a bunch of Tiktokers and their fans bought tickets to the Trump rally with no intention of going. As a result, fans of the US president couldn’t get tickets and the rally attracted only 6,000 visitors when it had planned for more than 3 times that. No matter which side of politics you’re on, you have to admire the ingenuity of this attempt.
🧳 Travel service providers lay off workers- more bad news for the travel sector in India as Thomas Cook, and Yatra lay off nearly 400 people with another 600 furloughed. With new cases of coronavirus still rising, the hospitality and travel industry are one of the worst hit globally with no sign of relief on the horizon.
🙌 Brands think about shifting production from China to India- China’s mishandling of the pandemic and follow on economic rebellion from global brands is now working to the benefit of India. Multinational companies have vocally advocated India as the potential replacement for Chinese manufacturing, and now more leading consumer electronics, apparel, and other companies have joined the exodus attacks.
⚠️ RBI warns consumers of phishing attack - after the government and other cyber regulatory bodies issued warnings against phishing scams, now the RBI has issued warnings against attempts to steal banking information by posing as fake banking entities. Beware what links you click on and be careful never to share your OTP without verifying the entity asking for it.
😷 COVID cases in India cross 4.4 lakh, with 10,000 recoveries in 24 hours- India’s COVID-19 cases continue to rise as US, India and Brazil become the new hotspots of increased cases by the day. As before, recovery rates are strong too.
Hope you took a thing or two away from today’s edition. 😀
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