Finance

Retail sales rose by 4.0% in the January-February period from a year ago, compared with the 3.7% year-on-year growth in December and in line with Reuters estimates.
Industrial production climbed 5.9% in the first two months of the year from a year ago, slower than the 6.2% growth in December, but faster than a 5.3% expansion forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll.
Chinese policymakers unveiled on Sunday a wide-ranging plan to stimulate domestic consumption, reiterating Beijing’s pledges to bolster residents’ income and household spending.

A woman, right, looks at herself on her phone as she and others buy warm winter hats at a vendors shop in the Panjiayuan Market on December 6, 2024 in Beijing, China. 
Kevin Frayer | Getty Images

China’s economy showed a modest pickup for the first two months of the year, according to data published Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics, as Beijing reiterated its plan to bolster domestic consumption.
Retail sales rose by 4.0% in the January-February period from a year ago, compared with the 3.7% year-on-year growth in December and in line with Reuters estimates.

Industrial production climbed 5.9% in the first two months of the year from a year ago, slower than the 6.2% growth in December, but faster than a 5.3% expansion forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll. Industrial output growth in the equipment-making and high-tech manufacturing sector accelerated, the statement said, growing 10.6% and 9.1% on year, respectively.
Fixed asset investment, reported on a year-to-date basis, rose by 4.1%, beating the 3.6% growth estimated by economists, a notable jump from the 3.2% increase last year.
The statistics agency attributed the improvement in economic activities at the start of the year to “sustained effects from several stimulus measures,” while flagging “a more complicated and challenging external environment, insufficient domestic demand and difficulties for enterprises in operation and production,” according to a CNBC translation of the Chinese statement.
“The foundation for a sustainable economic recovery is still unstable,” it added.

The data comes shortly after Chinese policymakers unveiled a wide-ranging plan to stimulate domestic consumption, reiterating Beijing’s pledges to bolster residents’ income and household spending.

The notice, published Sunday, repeated Beijing’s plan to stabilize the stock market, establish a childcare subsidy scheme as well as boosting tourism.
While the high-level document appears to lack concrete implementation details, it provides a glance into Beijing’s stance toward addressing some deep-seated issues, such as the slowing income growth and insufficient social safety net, Lynn Song, chief China economist at ING, told CNBC via email.
“Directionally it is quite encouraging that policymakers are taking a sober look at these themes, and it should help the longer term transition to a consumption driven economy,” he added.

China’s unemployment rate in urban areas rose to 5.4% in February, the highest level in two years, according to LSEG data based on the official figures.
Separate data on Monday showed China’s new home prices fell 4.8% in February from a year ago, a smaller decline than the 5.0% drop in January.
Investment into real estate development fell 9.8% year-on-year in the two months, compared with a 10.6% decline in December. The data reflected policymakers’ efforts to provide credit support to the cash-strapped developers, Zichun Huang, China economist at Capital Economics, said in a note.

Growth target ‘will not be easy’

Chinese leadership took on a hefty task by keeping a growth target of “around 5%” this year, a target seen harder to reach given rising trade tensions with the U.S. and entrenched deflationary pressure for the economy.
Fu Lingui, spokesperson for the statistics bureau, said at a press conference on Monday that achieving this year’s growth target “will not be easy.”
Economists say Beijing will likely need to provide stronger stimulus to achieve this year’s growth target and bolster domestic consumption to fill the hole left by potentially slowing exports. Exports contributed nearly a quarter of China’s GDP last year.
China’s exports growth slowed significantly in the first two months while imports plunged on lackluster domestic demand. Consumer price inflation in February fell below zero for the first time in over a year.
Beijing revised down its annual inflation target to “around 2%” — the lowest in more than two decades — from above 3% in prior years, a move seen to show a degree of official acceptance of the current deflationary environment.
As part of an expanded fiscal package, Chinese leaders pledged at an annual parliamentary meeting earlier this month an additional 300 billion yuan ($41.5 billion) of ultra-long special treasury bonds for consumers’ subsidy support.
Still, beyond the trade-in program, the existing stimulus measures have barely targeted consumers directly.
Beijing’s directive to boost consumption is “a step in the right direction … but as is the case with other policy directives, its effectiveness will depend on how it will be implemented at the local level, and on how many resources will be put behind it,” said Alfredo Montufar-Helu, head of the China Center at The Conference Board, yet “these remain unknown.” More

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaking to CNBC on March 13th, 2025. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday the Trump administration is focused on preventing a financial crisis that could be the result of massive government spending over the past few years.
“What I could guarantee is we would have had a financial crisis. I’ve studied it, I’ve taught it, and if we had kept up at these spending levels that — everything was unsustainable,” Bessent said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We are resetting, and we are putting things on a sustainable path.”

President Donald Trump has made getting the government’s fiscal house in order a priority since taking office. He created the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, to spearhead job cuts and early retirement incentives across multiple federal agencies.
Still, the U.S. debt and deficit problem worsened during Trump’s first month in office, as the budget shortfall for February passed the $1 trillion mark.
Bessent noted that there are “no guarantees” there won’t be a recession.
The market has been on a tumultuous ride as of late as Trump’s widespread tariffs raised concerns about inflation and economic slowdown. The S&P 500 on Thursday fell into a 10% correction from its February high as volatility spiked.
Bessent believes pullbacks like the one the market is in right now are benign, and Trump’s pro-business policies will boost the market and the economy over the long run.

“I’ve been in the investment business for 35 years, and I can tell you that corrections are healthy. They’re normal,” he said. “What’s not healthy is straight up, that you get these euphoric markets. That’s how you get a financial crisis. It would have been much healthier if someone had put the brakes on in ’06, ’07. We wouldn’t have had the problems in ’08.”
“I’m not worried about the markets. Over the long term, if we put good tax policy in place, deregulation and energy security, the markets will do great,” Bessent added. “I say that one week does not the market make.” More

Across advanced economies, the rental market is undergoing a profound change. In the years before covid-19 struck, rents were high but not growing fast: the cost of leasing a home rose by about 2% a year, according to official data. During the pandemic, rental inflation slowed and, in some cities, rents fell as landlords desperately looked for tenants. More

Across advanced economies, the rental market is undergoing a profound change. In the years before covid-19 struck, rents were high but not growing fast: the cost of leasing a home rose by about 2% a year, according to official data. During the pandemic, rental inflation slowed and, in some cities, rents fell as landlords desperately looked for tenants. More

Across advanced economies, the rental market is undergoing a profound change. In the years before covid-19 struck, rents were high but not growing fast: the cost of leasing a home rose by about 2% a year, according to official data. During the pandemic, rental inflation slowed and, in some cities, rents fell as landlords desperately looked for tenants. More

Goldman Sachs Asset Management is trying to serve more investors looking for downside protection from market turmoil.
Bryon Lake helped the firm launch its newest buffer exchange-traded fund this month: the Goldman Sachs U.S. Large Cap Buffer 3 ETF.

“I’m an investor. You’re an investor. The folks watching are investors, and there’s an incredible amount of uncertainty right now: Tariffs, the widening out of equity markets away from Mag 7 [and] geopolitical issues,” the Goldman Sachs chief transformation officer told anchor Bob Pisani on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”
Lake joined Goldman Sachs last summer. According to the firm’s press release, it was for a newly created role aimed at expanding its investment strategies. Previously, Lake headed the global ETF business at JPMorgan Chase
“The buffer products are designed to help protect people to the downside while also allowing them to participate to the upside,” he said. “The way they’re designed, is they’ll protect from down 5% to 15% while still allowing you to participate upwards of 5% to 7%. And, then those reset on a quarterly basis.”
Lake suggests the buffer ETFs use approaches that have strong track records.
“These are… tried and true strategies that have been used by investors for decades now,” he said.
The Goldman Sachs U.S. Large Cap Buffer 3 ETF is down about 3% since it started trading on March 4. The S&P 500 is off almost 4% in the same time frame.

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Americans reported losing $5.7 billion to investment scams in 2024, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The typical victim lost more than $9,000 on average.
“Pig-butchering scams” are a common investment fraud whereby scammers develop a relationship with victims, entice them to invest money and then swindle them.
There are three common signs of fraud that can help people avoid being duped.

South_agency | E+ | Getty Images

Consumers lost $5.7 billion to investment scams in 2024 — more than in any other type of fraud and up 24% from 2023, according to new data from the Federal Trade Commission.
Investment scams generally involve claims that a consumer will get big returns by investing in a hot new moneymaking scheme, according to the FTC.

Most people — 79% — who reported an investment scam to the FTC lost money, with the typical victim losing more than $9,000 on average, the agency said.
Since FTC data is based on consumer reports of fraud, the true scope of investment fraud is likely much higher after factoring in people who don’t step forward.
“These scams are becoming a really huge problem for consumers,” said John Breyault, the National Consumers League’s vice president of public policy, telecommunications and fraud.
More from Personal Finance:Crypto relationship scams pose ‘catastrophic harm’How this 77-year-old widow lost $661,000 in a common tech scam’Financial sextortion’ of teens is a ‘rapidly escalating threat’

AI, cryptocurrency contribute to investment fraud

Common investment frauds include “pig-butchering” scams, a name that references the practice of fattening a pig before slaughter.

The fraudsters often contact victims out of nowhere — perhaps via text, social media or a dating app — to try to develop relationships and gain trust before pitching investment opportunities that supposedly yield high returns, often in virtual assets such as cryptocurrency, experts said.
Though the investments may seem legitimate, criminals eventually disappear with the consumers’ money.

It has gotten easier to commit these and other related frauds as artificial intelligence has helped make criminals more convincing, such as in using deepfakes, Breyault said. Deepfakes are manipulated videos or other images or sounds in which people can say and do things that seem real but are not.
Organized crime networks have also established scam operations centers across Southeast Asia, in countries including Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The centers are staffed by thousands of people, often illegally trafficked and forced to carry out these investment schemes globally, it said.
Criminal networks often use cryptocurrency to facilitate pig-butchering frauds because it lets them “move substantial funds easily, cheaply, and without much fear of detection,” researchers at the University of Texas at Austin wrote in a recent research paper.

How to reduce investment fraud risk

While there’s no “silver bullet” to protect against fraud, there are ways consumers can reduce their risk, Breyault said. Here are three characteristics that run through many frauds, he said:

Urgency. Be wary of any pitch that has a form of urgency attached to it, Breyault said. The FTC warns that scammers “want you to act before you have time to think. … They might threaten to arrest you, sue you, take away your driver’s or business license, or deport you. They might say your computer is about to be corrupted.”
Unusual payment method. Scammers often ask victims to pay in specific or unusual ways, Breyault said. “They often insist that you can only pay by using cryptocurrency, wiring money through a company like MoneyGram or Western Union, using a payment app, or putting money on a gift card and then giving them the numbers on the back of the card,” the FTC said.
Isolation. Scammers will try to isolate victims so they don’t tell other people about the circumstances who might alert them that it’s a scam, Breyault said. They might say things like, “‘No one will believe you if you tell them about this,’ or ‘the cops will come get you if you report it,’ or ‘your loved ones will be in danger,'” Breyault said. More

Last week at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, CEOs of European telecoms firms called on regulators to make it easier for them to combine their operations with other businesses.
Currently, there are numerous telco players operating in different European countries.
However, telco bosses say they’d be able to compete more effectively with only three main players per market — a model that’s become the standard in places like the U.S, China and India.

The Deutsche Telekom pavilion at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Angel Garcia | Bloomberg | Getty Images

BARCELONA — Europe’s telecommunication firms are ramping up calls for more industry consolidation to help the region compete more effectively with superpowers like the U.S. and China on key technologies like 5G and artificial intelligence.
Last week at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade show in Barcelona, CEOs of several telecoms firms called on regulators to make it easier for them to combine their operations with other businesses and reduce the overall number of carriers operating across the continent.

Currently, there are numerous telco players operating in multiple EU countries and non-EU members such as the U.K. However, telco chiefs told CNBC this situation is untenable, as they’re unable to compete effectively when it comes to price and network quality.
“If we’re going to invest in technology, in deep know-how, and bring drastic change, positive drastic change in Europe — like other large technological companies have done in the U.S. or we’re seeing today in China — we need scale,” Marc Murtra, CEO of Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica, told CNBC’s Karen Tso in an interview.
“To be able to get scale, we need to consolidate a fragmented market like the telecoms market in Europe,” Murtra added. “And for that, we need a regulation that allows us to consolidate. So what we do ask is: please unleash us. Let us gain scale. Let us invest in technology and bring upon productive change.”

Christel Heydemann, CEO of French carrier Orange, said that while some mega-deal activity is starting to gather pace in Europe, more needs to be done to guarantee the continent’s competitiveness on the world stage.
Last year, Orange closed a deal to merge its Spanish operations with local mobile network provider Masmovil. Meanwhile, more recently, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority approved a £15 billion ($19 billion) merger between telecoms firms Vodafone and Three in the U.K., subject to certain conditions.

“We’ve been actively driving consolidation in Europe,” Orange’s Heydemann told CNBC. “We see things changing now. There’s still a lot of hope.”
However, she added: “I think there’s a lot of pressure in Europe from the business environment on our political leaders to get things to change. But really, things have not yet changed.”
During a fiery keynote address on Monday, the CEO of German telco Deutsche Telekom, Tim Höttges, said that other telco markets such as the U.S. and India have condensed in size to only a handful of players.
The American telco industry is dominated by its three largest mobile network operators, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. T-Mobile is majority-owned by Deutsche Telekom.

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A chart comparing the share price performance of T-Mobile, America’s largest telco by market cap, with that of Germany’s Deutsche Telekom and France’s Orange.

“We need a reform of the of the competition policy,” Höttges said onstage at MWC. “We have to be allowed to consolidate our activities.”
“There is no reason that every market has to operate with three or four operators,” he added. “We should build a European single market … because, if we cannot increase our consumer prices, if we cannot charge the over-the-top players, we have to get efficiencies out of the scale which we created.”
“Over-the-top” refers to media platforms such as Netflix that deliver content over the internet, bypassing traditional cable networks.

Europe’s competitiveness in focus

From AI to advances to next-generation 5G networks, Europe’s telecoms firms have been investing heavily into new technologies in a bid to move beyond the legacy model of laying down cables that enable internet connectivity — a business model that’s earned them the pejorative term “dumb pipes.”
However, this costly endeavor of modernization has happened in tandem with sluggish revenue growth and an inability for the sector to effectively monetize its networks to the same degree that technology giants have done with the emergence of mobile applications and, more recently, generative AI tools.
At MWC, many mobile network operators talked up their usage of AI to improve network quality, better serve their customers and gain market share from competitors.
Still, Europe’s telco bosses say they could be accelerating their digital transformation journeys if they were allowed to combine with other large multinational players.
“There’s this real focus now around European competitiveness,” Luke Kehoe, industry analyst for Europe at network intelligence firm Ookla, told CNBC on the sidelines of MWC last week. “There’s a goal to mobilize policy to improve telecoms networks.”

In January, the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, issued its so-called “Competitiveness Compass” to EU lawmakers.
The document calls for, among other things, “revised guidelines for assessing mergers so that innovation, resilience and the investment intensity of competition in certain strategic sectors are given adequate weight in light of the European economy’s acute needs.”
Meanwhile, last year former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi released a long-awaited report that urged radical reforms to the EU through a new industrial strategy to ensure its competitiveness.
It also calls for a new Digital Networks Act that would look to improve incentives for telcos to build next-generation mobile networks, reduce compliance costs, improve connectivity for end-users, and harmonize EU policy across the network spectrum, or the range of radio frequencies used for wireless communication.
“The common theme and the mood music is certainly reducing ex-ante regulation and to foster what they would call a more competitive environment which is an environment more conducive of consolidation,” Ookla’s Kehoe told CNBC. “Moving forward, I think that there will be more consolidation.”
However, the telco industry has some way to go toward seeing transformational cross-border mergers and acquisitions, Kehoe added.

For many telco industry analysts, the demands for increased consolidation is nothing new.
“European telco CEOs have never been shy about calling for consolidation and growth-friendly regulation,” Nik Willetts, CEO of the telco industry association TM Forum, told CNBC. “But regulation is only one piece of the puzzle.”
“In the last 12 months we’ve seen a new energy from our members in Europe to get on with the huge task to transform themselves: simplifying, modernizing and automating their operations and legacy tech.”
“This will make it possible to rapidly adapt to new customer needs and market realities, whether building new partnerships, undergoing M&A or delayering integrated businesses – all trends we expect to reach new heights over the next 24 months,” he added. More