2014年经济学人 本周经济要闻（在线收听）

Business this week

HewlettPackard decided to hive off its PCandprinter business and create a new company, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, to focus on servers, cloud computing and big data. It will be run by Meg Whitman, HP's boss. When she became chief executive three years ago Ms Whitman jettisoned the idea of spinning off the PC business. But with the rise of tablets HP's computer sales have suffered, falling 7% last year, according to Gartner, a consulting firm.

Samsung's announcement that profit in the third quarter had halved from the same period last year, its fourth consecutive quarterly drop, got some wondering how it would respond to the challenge of an increasingly saturated smartphone market. Squeezed between lowcost competitors and Apple, the South Korean company's share of that market has fallen further this year.

Back down to earth

Rocket Internet's stock continued to slide. The German company, which backs ecommerce startups, made a disappointing stockmarket debut on October 2nd, with its share price closing 13% down on the day after being priced at the top of the IPO's range. Still, Rocket raised 1.4 billion and said investors would be more interested in its long-term prospects.

Facebook completed its takeover of WhatsApp. The deal is now valued at $21.8 billion, almost $3 billion more than when it was announced in February, as the price of Facebook's shares, which are being paid out to WhatsApp's investors, has risen since then. So has the number of people using WhatsApp, to 600m monthly active users.

The slow-growth movement

The IMF's latest assessment of the world economy weighed heavily on stockmarkets. Although the downward revision to overall world output for this year was small, estimates for Germany, Japan and Brazil were reduced considerably. The debt hangover and recession “still cast a shadow”, the IMF said, and investment after the recovery has been weaker than expected. Underscoring this, new figures for August recorded the biggest drop in German exports and industrial production since January 2009.

The Bank of England gave British banks less than three months to submit plans on how they will ringfence their retail operations from riskier parts of their business, which the Vickers commission recommended in 2011. But the banks will have to present their proposals without knowing how much capital they will be expected to hold, details that the central bank will provide later next year.

Responding to speculation in the markets Rio Tinto confirmed that it had been approached by Glencore during the summer about a takeover, but had turned it down. A merger would create the world's biggest mining group. Ivan Glasenberg, Glencore's chief executive, submitted the proposal personally to Rio Tinto; he is not known to be one for giving up so easily.

No magic kingdom

The operator of Disneyland Paris was thrown a 1 billion lifeline by Walt Disney Company, its biggest shareholder. The theme park, which opened in 1992, is burdened by debt and has not made a profit for years, as attendance and hoteloccupancy rates have tumbled after the financial crisis.

The Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan was sold to a Chinese insurance company for $1.95 billion, or nearly $1.4m a room. The hotel, which opened its doors to visitors in 1931, is to undergo a big renovation to restore it to its former glory. Some of its 1,413 rooms could possibly be turned into apartments.