#7. The AWS of banking

San Francisco-based startup Synapse closed a $33 million Series B funding round this week to develop new products and expand internationally, TechCrunch reports.

The company wants to democratize financial services and is working on this via a platform that makes it easy for banks and other financial companies to work with developers; a ‘Lego brick’ approach to building services, as CEO Sankaet Pathak told TechCrunch. 


#6. A good week for the S&P 500

At the time this article was written, the American S&P 500 was well on its way to record its biggest weekly gain since November 2018. Investors seem to bet on an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve later this year, Bloomberg reports.

Such a cut would improve the outlook for corporate profits and boost the US economy. As a result, the S&P 500 was up more than 4% this week.


#5. NASA opens up the space station

On Friday, there was big news for those dreaming of a trip into space; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that it will open the International Space Station (ISS) for more business, CNBC reports.

This includes opening the space station for private astronaut missions as early as next year. The idea behind this is to reduce NASA’s annual costs for keeping the station operational, according to CNBC.


#4. Luxury brands target social media

In an attempt to target young shoppers, big luxury brands such as Dior, Gucci and Louis Vuitton are splashing out when it comes to their social media budgets, Reuters reports. While these players were less active on social media five years ago they are now leapfrogging the competition (i.e. smaller brands).

According to the same Reuters article, Kering - the owner of Gucci - said for example that it spent half of its 2018 media budget on digital advertising, up from 20% just three years before.


#3. No deal for Renault’s boss

The proposed merger between French carmaker Renault and Fiat Chrysler we mentioned in our top Tweets article from a couple of weeks ago won't happen.

The French government - which is with 15% Renault’s biggest shareholder - said it needed more time to make sure alliance-partner Nissan was comfortable with the merger, the Financial Times reports.

This left the company’s boss, Dominique Senard, no choice but to call FCA’s chairman John Elkann resulting in the latter calling off the deal.


#2. Venezuela’s exodus

According to the latest figures from the United Nations, so far, around 4 million citizens have fled the spiralling economic and political crisis in Venezuela, Bloomberg reports. The exodus of Venezuelans could become the largest in the history of Latin America and could soon exceed the 6.3 million refugees from the civil war in Syria.

Columbia is the main destination for Venezuelan people, the country currently hosts 1.3 million of them, followed by Peru and Chile, according to the same Bloomberg article.  


#1. Canada’s jobless rate

On Friday, there was good news (again) for Canada. Official data showed that the country’s unemployment rate dropped to a record low of 5.4%, Reuters reports. Canada added 27 700 new jobs in May which was higher than expected and pushed the Canadian dollar to its highest level in seven weeks. 

Statistics Canada said that the 5.4% was the lowest level since this kind of data became available in 1976, according to the same Reuters article.


And that's a wrap - the 23rd week of 2019 all captured in Tweets. As always, we'll continue to track Twitter and bring you the top financial micro-messages from the web. See you back here next week.

Source: www.scoopnest.com.