Business news

Business news

Listen to the business news to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

The first item in the news today is the recent elections that took place across the country. This was a crucial vote, which may see a dramatic change in how the country develops over the coming years. Overall, a 54.5 per cent voter turnout was registered. This represents an increase of 11 per cent over the previous election and six per cent above the average for the past 50 years. There has also been a slight change in demographics, with an increase in youth turnout in the 18- to 24- and 24- to 29-year-old brackets. Despite this increase, young people are still less likely to vote than older people; 84 per cent of voters in the 70 plus age group came to the polling stations.

Moving on, the global digital powerhouse ONK today posted quarterly results which were above forecast. Back in March, Tim Bolling, CEO, issued a profit warning over fears that there would be losses following the recall of their leading product, the 40d device. In fact, the company posted quarterly revenue of US$14.8 billion which represents an increase of 11 per cent from the same quarter a year ago. They also announced that they had sold 21 million 40d devices over the quarter. The company has provided the information that with this level of revenue, there will be a gross margin of 34 to 35 per cent, ultimately leading to a US$1.20 per share cash dividend awarded to shareholders.

And in our final news item we ask, will we soon be saying goodbye to coins and notes forever? The nationwide trend of using cashless payment options is increasing. There are a number of reasons for this development. A key reason for this is a growing interest in reducing the number of items people need to leave their homes with. As almost everyone carries a smartphone with them, and many people also have smartwatches, the ability to pay for things using one of these two technologies is particularly appealing. More and more retailers are accepting cashless payments and in some cases they've stopped accepting cash altogether.

Task 1

Task 2

Discussion

Download
Worksheet87.93 KB

Language level

Average: 4.3 (46 votes)
Profile picture for user Magedelabd

Submitted by Magedelabd on Sun, 03/11/2019 - 12:58

Permalink
My overview today is about a trend is growing up in my town , where a big part of the demographics prefer to buy the chines product . in my automotive company where i work as a service manager , my service center revenue had been increased by almost 100 per cent it was above the ceo forecast

Submitted by nikisyazwani on Wed, 02/10/2019 - 16:54

Permalink
I have completed the lesson for 'Business News'. The level I chose was Upper Intermediate B2.
Profile picture for user kamicounciler

Submitted by kamicounciler on Sun, 22/09/2019 - 17:22

Permalink
economic researchers has announced that the value of bitcoin will be increasing during 2019.so far it has grown several percent but more growth is expected. as google charts show,the value of bitcoin has increased from 6707 USD in 9/22/2018 to 10003 USD in 9/22/2019.

Submitted by starfish2019 on Wed, 04/09/2019 - 14:04

Permalink
Write a short overview of statistics, figures or trends that you are familiar with. Normally, my hobby is to check the gold price trend from Kitco.com and sometimes, I also joined at the commodity trading to make small profits from gold price changes. Currently, gold price trend is high and going to the upward direction with Bid/Ask 1540.40/1541.40 and that trend was stable since last month with 30daychg with Bid +$77.00 | Ask+5.26% figure.

Submitted by nikoslado on Thu, 20/06/2019 - 18:43

Permalink
Dear Team, could you give me,please, an explanation about the use of ''see''in this:''This was a crucial vote, which may see a dramatic change...''.Is it here something like ''mean'',''seem',''show'','' indicate'' etc....,because I didn't find anything with this meaning anywhere I looked up in the dictionaries.Your explanations- even about not so important things - always help me catch useful tips in different uses of English.Thanks a lot.
Profile picture for user Peter M.

Submitted by Peter M. on Fri, 21/06/2019 - 07:37

In reply to by nikoslado

Permalink

Hello nikoslado,

The verb 'see' here is close to 'show' in meaning. It tells us what the speaker thinks is going to happen in the given time frame.

 

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Submitted by Haiqal Shukri on Sat, 11/05/2019 - 15:33

Permalink
Task 1 : 6/6 Task 2 : 13/14

Submitted by juanfra366 on Mon, 25/03/2019 - 12:53

Permalink
I usually see statistics about vote intention in the news. Also there are a lot of statistics about economic situation: unemployment rate, price growing rate,...