Finance
New Interim Finance Director Deal in the Works | South Pasadena Finance Dept. Pushing Through | The South Pasadenan | South Pasadena News
Scott Miller, a retired municipal finance official with four decades in the field, is being considered to serve as South Pasadena’s new finance director on an interim basis, the South Pasadenan News has learned.
Although an agreement has not been signed or finalized, “we are working on it,” said Luis Frausto, Acting Deputy City Manager.
Miller would become the tenth person to manage the city’s volatile finance department since the departure of David Batt in March of 2018.
CITY OF SOUTH PASADENA FINANCE DEPARTMENT PAST DIRECTORS
The news comes shortly after the city confirmed outgoing Finance Director John Downs, who told the city last month he would retire May 2, has been persuaded to stay on “in a limited term capacity to assist with finalizing the fiscal year 2024-2025 budget,” Frausto said. Downs’ “role will transition from managing daily finance operations to focusing on specific projects, with the budget being his primary responsibility. We expect his contributions to extend at least through June.”
The city is currently scheduled to adopt the new budget June 5—a target that is looking increasingly less certain.
According to press reports, Miller was chief financial officer at the city of Beverly Hills for seven years through 2015, where he was credited with helping secure high ratings for the city from the three major credit rating agencies.
Miller then worked briefly as chief finance officer for Broward County, Florida and then with Urban Futures Inc., a local government service agency in California. In March 2016, he became interim chief financial officer for the city of Riverside, initially under a short term contract. Although he became a Riverside employee in early 2017, he left several months later. At the time, a Riverside city spokesman told a local publication he could not say if Miller’s departure from Riverside was a mutual decision.
Prior to joining Beverly Hills, Miller was employed by the city of Palm Desert, the city and county of San Francisco, the University of California–Berkeley and Turner Broadcasting System. He graduated from San Diego State University with a BA in psychology and minor in business administration and he holds a PhD in public administration from Arizona State University.
Finance
Trump bull market is just beginning: Fmr. TD Ameritrade CEO
Corporate America is gearing up for Trump 2.0, having already gotten a flavor of what Trump has in mind. Potentially crushing fresh tariffs on China, even if it means higher levels of US inflation. Mass deportations come with their own set of economic risks. And soon, potentially, a new leader atop the Federal Reserve. Is there any way a top executive could prepare for uncertain outcomes tied to these initiatives from the Trump administration? How does one lead their teams when uncertainty begins to reign supreme again? Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi sat down with former TD Ameritrade CEO and former head football coach at Coastal Carolina University Joe Moglia. Moglia is not only considered a market master for his work from 2001 to 2008 building TD Ameritrade into a trading powerhouse but also a leadership expert. Moglia shares his perspective on the record-setting year for markets, what’s next for investors, and how to lead with a clear focus in 2025.
For full episodes of Opening Bid, listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on our website.
Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid is produced by Rachael Lewis-Krisky.
Finance
UK finance minister to revive regular economic talks with China in January trip, sources says
By Joe Cash
BEIJING (Reuters) – Britain’s finance minister Rachel Reeves will visit China on a two-day trip in January to revive high-level economic and financial talks that have been frozen since 2019, three people with knowledge of the plan said.
Reeves is scheduled to meet China’s vice premier He Lifeng, the country’s economy tsar, on Jan. 11 in Beijing to restart what had been annual talks known as the Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD), they said.
If those discussions show progress, the two sides could look to re-launch what had been a regular and wider meeting known as the Joint Economic and Trade Commission (JETCO) later next year, the sources said.
British businesses have also pressed to restart meetings of the UK-China CEO Council, a group established by then-Prime Minister Theresa May and then-Premier Li Keqiang in 2018, one of the sources added.
Reuters reported on Thursday that HSBC Chairman Mark Tucker will lead a business delegation that will visit China next month in a bid to boost trade and investment with a particular focus on financial services.
Reeves will also go to Shanghai, where she will meet with British companies operating in China on Jan. 12, according to the sources, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the plans.
Britain decided to suspend most economic dialogues with China in 2020 after Beijing imposed a national security law in Hong Kong, the former British colony. Since then, spying allegations, the war in Ukraine, and the sanctioning of lawmakers have increased tensions between the two countries.
The Labour government, in power in Britain since July, has made improving ties with China one of its main foreign policy goals after a period under successive Conservative governments when relations plunged to their lowest in decades.
In 2022, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, a Conservative, declared the end of a “golden era” of relations with China that one of his predecessors, David Cameron, had championed.
Over the preceding decade, British and Chinese officials had met annually for high-level trade and investment talks, holding an EFD almost every year and a JETCO every two years.
Those talks resulted in the London-Shanghai stock connect scheme, Britain joining the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and joint investment into green technologies, including the UK’s Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant.
(Reporting by Joe Cash)
Finance
Bloomberg’s Essential (Aussie) Summer Reading List
Hello! It’s Rebecca here with your final Australia Briefing of 2024. And what a year it’s been. From the re-election of Donald Trump and the ongoing slowdown in China, to the blockbuster IPOs and corporate scandals closer to home — 2024 will go down as one for the ages.
Before we all revert to the sanctity of our beach towels, I thought I’d load you up with a selection of my favorite pieces from Bloomberg’s Australia newsroom this year. A stockpile of stories, videos and podcasts to help you while away those days by the pool, at the campsite, or wherever the onset of summer takes you…
Is ‘Bluey’ Ending? Disney’s Worried Biggest Kids Show Ever Is at Risk — Essential reading for anyone with a kid, or honestly, a pulse. Did you know that Americans watched 731 million hours of Bluey in 2023, more than NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy, Gilmore Girls or that perennial of the broadcast, cable and streaming eras, Friends? That’s almost as much as my kids.
Australia Has a Top Pension Program. Why Are Many Retirees Still Struggling? — It’s official: Australia’s retirement system is the envy of the wealthy world. So why aren’t we all diving Scrooge McDuck-style into a vat of cash?
Malaria Rates Surge After Mosquito Net Changes Complicate Global Fight — Travel to the depths of Siar Village, Papua New Guinea with our reporters as they explain why the world is losing its fight against malaria.
World’s Top Retailer Is Now Trying to Save Air New Zealand — We report a lot on the former CEO of this airline, you may know him as the New Zealand PM. But what do you know about the new one?
Investing for the Ultra-Rich: Family Offices Are Booming in Perth, Australia — Twiggy lives there, and so does Gina — but those two reasonably well-off citizens aside, why is Perth a magnet for family offices?
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