Features

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – Attorney General William Barr is confronting one of the biggest crises of his tenure after the Justice Department reversed course on a recommendation about how long one of President Donald Trump’s allies should go to prison, prompting a team of career prosecutors to quit the case. Coming after he helped the president navigate the special counsel’s probe of Russian election meddling and prevail in the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S….

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa)- Spain’s Grifols family has prospered with storefront collection centers across U.S. Harry Lee Armstrong is almost broke. But he’s found a quick way to make a little cash. It’s called “plassing.” Laid off from his construction job, Armstrong has driven to a storefront donation center where a valuable global commodity — the golden plasma in human blood — is harvested seven days a week. Wedged between a dental office and a liquor…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson committed tens of billions of pounds for a controversial new high-speed rail line linking London with cities to the north, despite soaring costs and mounting anger from his own Conservative Party colleagues. The High Speed 2 (HS2) development will become Europe’s largest infrastructure project but it has suffered delays and criticism of its management, with spiraling costs estimated to rise potentially to more than…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa)- Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon vowed to maintain pressure on the U.K. for another referendum on independence and said the standoff with Prime Minister Boris Johnson over the issue is just a “phony battle.” In an interview with Bloomberg Television in Brussels on Monday, she also repeated the possibility of asking the courts to decide whether the Scottish Parliament already has the power to hold a consultative vote. That, though, is not the preferred…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Irish stocks slid on Monday after polls put Sinn Fein in place for a possible role in government, fueling declines in banks and property shares given that the party’s policies include a wealth tax and a freeze on residential rents. The benchmark ISEQ Index slid as much as 1.4%, with Bank of Ireland Group Plc and AIB Group Plc falling as much as 7.8% and 6%, respectively. Among real estate…

ABIDJAN (Capital Markets in Africa) – In Ivory Coast, where big-man personalities dominate and switching allegiances is par for the course, Guillaume Soro — former student leader, rebel chief and prime minister — seems a perfect fit to one day lead the world’s biggest cocoa producer. His loyalties have zigzagged over the years, from being a supporter of Laurent Gbagbo, the man who led Ivory Coast into a civil war, to backing Alassane Ouattara, who defeated Gbagbo in elections…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa): President Donald Trump mostly stifled his fury toward the impeachment witnesses who detailed, over hundreds of hours of testimony, the turmoil wrought by his handling of Ukraine policy. Now that he’s been acquitted of two impeachment charges, they’re bracing for payback. It’s not just the witnesses — such as Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council analyst — who could face retribution for speaking out. The deeper anxiety among many career national…