14/07/2017 World Business Report

Thursday. The UN said the handling of his case was a domestic matter.

Now it's time for World Business Report.

Wall Street's giants have been getting a bump from Trump,

They conquered Asia and now they're heading for Africa.

We look at the unstoppable rise of the Tuk Tuk.

In a moment, Singapore narrowly avoids recession.

First, we start on Wall Street where three of the giants of US

banking report their results later today

and we are talking about Wells Fargo,

Citigroup and, the biggest of them all, JPMorgan Chase.

Investors have been betting that the good times are back

for America's bankers thanks to the election of Donald Trump.

That's helped stock markets hit record highs.

Today's results could give us a better idea.

Take a look at these share prices, especially JPMorgan Chase

They all got a boost from hopes he would help the US economy grow

The slow pace of policy change has, though, cooled that enthusiasm

In particular, President Trump has promised to scrap the heavy

regulation of banks brought in after the financial crisis in 2008.

But his new more lenient rules, the Financial Choice Act,

are unlikely to get through Congress in their current form.

What could help the case is that the top banks

all comfortably passed so called 'stress tests' last month.

It basically means they've been judged financially solid enough,

with ample money in reserve to withstand another financial

And those tests could be eased in future.

This week President Trump nominated this man,

financier Randal Quarles, for a leading role in overseeing

He's seen as much more sympathetic to big banks.

But Samira Hussain in New York warns investors could

Analysts aren't expecting this past quarter to be much of a scene. When

Mr Trump was elected, US markets were downright euphoric. The task

reforms and infrastructure spending were going to boost the economy. But

fast forward to July and not much has happened. That's leading many to

believe the Trump bump may be dead. So, what does that mean for banks?

Well, bank stocks were a big winner when it came to the Trump bump. One

of the best performing sectors. Now the reason for the Trump, the

legislative agenda of President Trump, is no longer looking as

plausible as before. Well, that has analysts wondering if this will mean

the gains made by banks may start to come down.

Chris Wheeler is banking analyst at Atlantic Equities.

What are you expecting? We will see earnings that are down quarter on

quarter. But that is common, it's a seasonal thing. It will also look

weaker compared to one year ago because there was a big surge after

the Brexit folk at the end of June, which made last year's numbers look

bad. So they won't be great numbers but they won't be bad. Will they

have a big impact on the share price? We have seen from the charts

that they have gone up nearly one third since President Trump was

elected. Or do you think this is not so great result have already been

priced in? I think they have a priced in. The management have been

warning about what's been going on. I think the other factors are that,

as touched on earlier, regulation or easing up of regulation, the stress

tests which allow banks to pay higher dividends, this is all

driving the sector, along with more interest rate rises. Let's talk

about that possible easing of regulations. What does it include?

It mean for the banks? A lot of the financial choices about consumers

and that was a big factor. I think what the Treasury has been saying is

that there can be a lot of things done outside legislation to ease

some of the burden that was put in place after the crisis, especially

allowing some of the legislatures the banks have to keep. So they have

to look outside of Congress. Let's talk about Randal Quarles, the new

guy coming into the Federal Reserve. He is being seen as potentially

quite friendly towards the big corporations? Yes. I think the view

taken is that the US authorities did a fairly good job of getting the

banking sector back into shape after the crisis. A better job than we did

here in Europe. But some of the regulations have gone to the stage

where they are worried about whether the cancer serve the wider economy,

if it gets the economic growth that Mr Trump wants. I think that's what

Randal Quarles will focus on. Weekly, looking forward, where the

UC US banks going in the 6- 12 months? They have had a really good

run in the last month. The sector is up since the first of June and it is

going higher. There are so many factors behind this. Away from just

the financial results, which are positive. OK, thank you very much

for your time. who needs four wheels

when you can have three? The tuk-tuk or auto rickshaw started

life in Italy in 1947, but now dominates Asian roads

from India to Indonesia to Thailand. Now Indian manufacturer ATUL

is punting the little machine as a cheap solution to Africa's

transport problems. It has set up assembly plants

across the continent, we went to one in Port

Elizabeth, South Africa. Behind me are the vehicles from

India and they are flown into a full manual assembly line. That assembly

line is purposefully designed because it does create employment

and it gives us the necessary personal control that we have in the

assembly line. We effectively put together in deciding to go down this

route check sheet and coincidently after doing that this little vehicle

ticked all of those boxes. The top three is unemployment, the second is

the ability to empower people to start micro- businesses. Not only

locally, in metropolitan areas and in rural areas. Thirdly, the

contribution to society. Now, the whole idea is to try to get

different vehicles to provide specific services to these

communities, so we are trying to ensure that in those communities

where you don't have transport infrastructure we have smaller

vehicles to navigate and this will solve a lot of the problems we see.

This happens all over Africa. Tuk-tuk was originally seen as a

novelty in Africa as a whole. But as we've seen, the acceptance of the

product and the capability of the product, both from a public

transport and workforce perspective, in delivering goods, I think we've

seen the growth in Africa grow exponentially as acceptance becomes

a reality. Let's go to Singapore now,

where the economy has narrowly It grew slightly in the last quarter

after a sharp contraction in the first three

months of the year. Remember, two quarters

of contraction in a row Sharanjit Leyl is looking at this

for us in Singapore a sigh Yes, a little bit of a side. --

sigh. It was thanks to a pickup in global demand that led to Singapore

narrowly dodging this recession. It was specifically growth in its tech

exports. Its electronics, its position in engineering industries.

But growth at 2.5% for the second quarter was actually less than

expected. Now what's interesting is the economy here is very trade

reliant. It usually access a good bellwether to how the global economy

is forming and analysts have been voicing lots of concerns about the

sustainability of Singapore's growth. It is very dependent on an

electronics. They say in the future they will have to rely on things

bike services to help offset any slowdown. We also saw for instant

the construction sector was weak and economists are saying essentially

that they are looking for a slightly better 2017, but are still remaining

cautious on how factors outside Singapore Goh. So really it is all

due to the global economy. All right, thank you. Before we go, a

quick look at the markets. It has been a good week for the

markets. Asia ending up for the fifth day in a row. The oil prices

down, that's over continued concerns about oversupply. But we've had high

demand in China for oil, which is what has stopped it from falling

further. You can get in touch with us on Twitter.

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