Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - Covid comes for Christmas

It’s looking like chances that the holiday season would be different from last year are fading. Though booster vaccinations are still seen as a bulwark against serious illness from the latest mutation of the coronavirus, fears of an unprecedented wave continue to grow along with the global rate of infection, which now matches the height of the summer delta wave. The U.K., which has been overwhelmed by the new omicron strain, is seen as a harbinger of things to come everywhere else. On Thursday, France said it will ban tourists and almost all business travelers from Britain in a bid to slow the spread. The plan comes after the U.K. recorded its highest number of new cases since the beginning of the crisis. Here’s the latest on the pandemic. —David E. Rovella

Bloomberg is tracking the coronavirus pandemic and the progress of global vaccination efforts.

New York City appears to be no match for the convergence of the delta and omicron variants, despite some of the toughest Covid-19 restrictions and highest vaccination rates in the U.S. Indeed, it’s looking a bit like 2020 again. “We’ve never seen this before in NYC,” Jay Varma, public health adviser to Mayor Bill de Blasio, said Thursday on social media. “Test positivity doubling in three days.”

Citadel, Blackstone and Millennium Management are among asset managers telling staff this week that they may once again work remotely. Citigroup is doing something similar.

China Fortune Land Development said it’s been unable to get a hold of a money manager it gave $313 million to invest, yet another blow to the debt-laden developer. Fortune said it has “lost contact” with China Create Capital.

Fired employees often want nothing more to do with their old job, but high earners in the U.K. should rethink that. For one JPMorgan trader in London, winning a court ruling that he should be rehired following a 2020 dismissal means millions of pounds of back pay.

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said an outlook for “more persistent” inflation was behind a surprise decision to raise interest rates for the first time in three years. “We’ve seen evidence of a very tight labor market and we’re seeing more persistent inflation pressures,” Bailey told BBC News on Thursday. 

Andrew Bailey  Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, who along with fellow Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has been scooping up Republican cash as he finds new ways to block President Joe Biden’s economic agenda, may have forced the party to push consideration of the $2 trillion bill to next year.  

Senate Democrats are instead turning to a voting rights bill they see as critical to preserving American democracy, given the nationwide push by Republicans to restrict voting access and place GOP appointees in charge of election agencies. But again, Manchin and Sinema may stand in the way of their own party.

• Pfizer is poised to dominate the $20 billion Covid-pill market.
• Tesla is going to court—in China—to silence its critics.
• Chinese workers are saying enough is enough, and Xi is not amused.
• U.S. Navy tests a new generation laser weapon.
• Bloomberg Opinion: New York takes it in the teeth from omicron.
• Bloomberg Green: Giant kites that drag cargo ships across oceans.
• Saudi Arabia wants its capital to be a place people want to live.

Betting on flashy names like Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, Shaquille O’Neal and Martha Stewart to boost blank-check companies this year left investors mostly in the red. Just about the nicest thing you could say about celebrity-backed special-purchase acquisition companies and the firms they brought public is that they’ve lost less for investors than benchmarks for the whole SPAC category. After that, things get ugly.

Shaquille O'Neal  Photographer: David Paul Morris

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