10 things you need to know in markets, October 18

Good morning! Here’s what you need to know in markets on
Thursday.

A
Chinese day trader reacts as he watches a stock ticker at a local
brokerage house on August 27, 2015 in Beijing,
China.
Kevin Frayer/Getty
Images

1.
Chinese stocks are cratering again. The
benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, down 2.7% today, has fallen
about 30% from late January, leaving it at the lowest level since
November 2014. The Chinese yuan also hit the weakest level
against the greenback since January 2017 after the US Treasury
Department cleared China of being a currency manipulator.

2. Powerful
Facebook investors co-filed a proposal to take down Mark
Zuckerberg as chairman. A similar proposal in
2017 was popular among independent investors but crushed because
of Zuckerberg’s voting power.

3. Spain’s
Santander is the latest bank to be caught up in Germany’s biggest
post-war fraud investigation involving a share-trading scheme
that the authorities say cost taxpayers billions of
euros. In June, prosecutors in Cologne opened a
tax investigation into Santander, confidential documents relating
to a state prosecutors’ investigation seen by Reuters and other
European news organizations reveal for the first time. They are
also looking at Australia’s Macquarie Bank and Germany’s Deutsche
Bank, as part of the broader investigation.

4. Saudi Arabia
paid the US $100 million on the same day US Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo visited Riyadh to discuss Jamal Khashoggi’s
disappearance. US officials denied that the payment
had anything to do with Pompeo’s visit or Khashoggi, though a
source said the timing was “no coincidence.” Meanwhile,
a top US Senate Democrat
slammed Trump’s response to Khashoggi’s alleged
killing. Sen. Chris Murphy said President Donald Trump has
made the US look “weaker” than ever by kowtowing to Saudis.

5. Facebook
has tentatively concluded that a recent hack that affected
millions of accounts was perpetrated by spammers, and not a
nation-state, the Wall Street Journal reported on
Wednesday, citing sources.Facebook believes the attackers were
spammers masquerading as a digital marketing company, the Journal
reported.

6. White House counsel
Don McGahn left the Trump administration on
Wednesday, a source with knowledge of the situation
said to Business Insider. McGahn was said to be on his
way out of the White House, which was expected to happen after
the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Here are all the top-level people who’ve either been fired or
resigned from the administration, and why they left.

7. The
US plans to turn up sanctions pressure on Venezuela
but sees less need to immediately target its energy sector, given
sagging production from the OPEC member’s state-run oil company,
a senior U.S. administration official said on Wednesday. The
US government has imposed several rounds of sanctions on
Venezuelan military and political figures close to socialist
President Nicolas Maduro, who it blames for trampling on human
rights and triggering the country’s economic collapse.

8. Mobile telecom equipment maker
Ericsson reported on Thursday a substantially higher
third-quarter operating profit than expected and said it was
tracking well towards its long-term targets.
Germany’s SAP also reported earnings, saying that its
cloud revenues grew by 41 percent in the third quarter as its
business transformation gathers pace, enabling management to
raise guidance for revenues and profits this year.

9. EU lawmakers are
expected to back a 35 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions
from new trucks by 2030, EU sources said ahead of a
vote on Thursday over new rules that seek to fight global warming
without harming industry. The target will be the first CO2
standard for trucks in the EU, which currently has no limits on
what accounts for almost one quarter of the bloc’s
transport-related emissions.

10. Italian
Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, head of the League party,
was quoted as saying he may consider running for the presidency
of the European Commission at the next
elections.“It’s true, friends from several European
countries are asking me to,” Salvini told la Repubblica daily in
an interview. “May is still far away. We will see, I’ll think
about it.” The next European elections are due May 23-26.