China 🇨🇳 Cuts ✂️ Mortgage Rate as Property 🏠 Crisis Deepens 📉
Scott D. Clary | Daily Business, Tech & Finance Newsletter
Scott D. Clary
August 25, 2022
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Here’s whats happening:
- China cuts mortgage rate as property crisis deepens
- Elon Musk subpoenas Jack Dorsey
- MoviePass is relaunching in beta form on Labor Day
- Former Apple engineer admits stealing trade secrets
- Australia's Northern Territory may Give Crypto Gambling Regulation a Go Ahead
China 🇨🇳 Cuts ✂️ Mortgage Rate as Property 🏠 Crisis Deepens 📉
China trimmed its key lending rates again, one week after it cut two interest rates in a surprise move.
Key Highlights:
- The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) reduced its five-year loan prime rate to 4.30% from 4.45% on August 22 🔽.
- The Chinese central bank also trimmed its one-year- loan prime rate to 3.65% from 3.70% 🔽.
- Last week, the PBOC also reduced some financial institutions’ one-year medium-term lending facility (MLF) loan rate by ten basis points 🔽.
What does this mean?
Ever since the Chinese government cracked down on its property sector last year, the country’s developers have been struggling to make ends meet. This resulted in to halt of construction projects.
That’s it? No. It also caused homebuyers who paid in advance for a yet-to-be-built property to boycott their mortgage payments.
Why did the PBOC reduce interest rates? 🤔
The move is seen as an attempt to revive credit demand and fire up the property economy hurt by extended Covid lockdowns and property debt problems.
Elon Musk Subpoenas Jack Dorsey ⚖
Elon Musk has subpoenaed Twitter’s former CEO, Jack Dorsey, as part of his legal effort to abandon his bid to acquire the microblogging platform.
Key Points:
- Twitter is suing Musk in Delaware Chancery Court to make him follow through on an agreement to buy Twitter for $44 billion. 💰
- Both parties have filed numerous subpoena requests, asking investment firms, banks, executives, and high-profile Silicon Valley figures for information and communications about the deal.
The subpoena:
According to legal filings, Musk’s attorneys are seeking documents and communications from Jack Dorsey regarding how Twitter detects, labels & counts fake accounts.
It is asking how Twitter uses daily active users as a key metric in its financial disclosures.
Musk alleges that Twitter wasn’t cooperating about the number of bots and spam among daily active users on its platform.
He also said that Twitter tried to mislead investors by providing false numbers in financial filings 📃 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
MoviePass 📽 is Relaunching in Beta Form on Labor Day
Movie theater ticket subscription startup MoviePass will relaunch in beta form on Labor Day.
The Timeline:
- The relaunch comes after the company had shut down its services in September 2019, ending the platform’s controversial run as a would-be disruptor of the moviegoing business.
- MoviePass cofounder Stacy Spikes had bought the company back after its parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY), went bankrupt.
- Since then, Spikes and his team have been diligently working on a relaunch of the popular service.
Wanna get in on the action?
- On August 25 at 9 am ET, a waitlist will open on moviepass.com for those wishing to join the beta version.
- Users can choose from three price tiers: $10, $20, or $30 per month.
- Those tiers will determine the number of monthly credits users will receive to put toward movies.
What’s next?
Since MoviePass’s fall from grace, several theaters have launched their own private movie passes, so only time will tell if the cinema market still warrants the existence of a third-party service like MoviePass.
Former Apple Engineer Admits Stealing Trade Secrets ❌
A former Apple employee, Xiaolang Zhang, is accused of stealing computer files containing trade secrets about Apple’s secretive car division.
Interestingly, the iPhone maker has also confirmed that Zhang has stolen about 24GB of qualified information, circuit boards, and a server from the company’s autonomous vehicle lab.
What should you know?
Xiaolang Zhang was arrested in July 2018 by federal agents at the San Jose airport, where he planned to fly to China.
His hearing is scheduled for November 14 as the punishment for trade secrets in the US is ten years imprisonment and a fine of almost $250,000.
The Apple Car project has been in the works for years and has reportedly faced numerous hurdles on its way to market, including a high staff turnover.
However, the project is still very much alive, and we could see the first Apple Car on roads in 2025.
Australia’s Northern Territory 🇦🇺 may Give Crypto Gambling Regulation a Go Ahead
The good news- Australia’s Northern Territory Racing Commission (NTRC) is consulting with its gambling licensees over a tentative proposal to incorporate crypto-wagering as part of the regulated gambling industry.
As NTRC regulates gaming and betting, it has sent a private document out to licensees, asking for their opinions on how the regulatory environment would appear to allow crypto wagering to take off in the Northern Territory (NT).
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