Bloomberg Walmart Inc’s 1999 acquisition of Asda looked set to disrupt the UK supermarket business, with the US retailer using its deep pockets to shake up entrenched players like Tesco Plc and J Sainsbury Plc. The purchase never quite lived up to the hype. Asda struggled to defend its market share against bigger rivals and the German discounters Aldi and …

Bloomberg Airbus SE is under pressure to carry out its job-cutting plan as the prospects for the aviation industry deteriorate, Chief Operating Officer Michael Schoellhorn said in an interview with Handelsblatt. The planemaker’s plan to eliminate 15,000 positions is “the minimum of what we have to do,” Schoellhorn said, adding that the company currently has no plans to expand the …

Bloomberg Ethiopian Airlines Group is willing to provide planes, pilots and maintenance services to beleaguered rival South African Airways as part of a joint venture with that country’s government. Africa’s biggest airline is offering operational assistance, Ethiopian CEO Tewolde GebreMariam said in an interview in Addis Ababa. The carrier isn’t interested in helping with debt repayments or the cost of …

Bloomberg India’s Supreme Court ordered local airlines to refund tickets booked for travel during a nationwide lockdown earlier this year, dealing a blow to an industry already strapped for cash. The court’s verdict also mandated airlines to issue credit vouchers even for tickets booked for travel outside the lockdown period, if the flights were later canceled due to virus-related restrictions. …

Bloomberg Holiday giant TUI AG could seek to raise about 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) through a rights issue and asset sales once bookings recover and the company starts generating meaningful revenue again. TUI will look at selling some of its 400 hotels and UK cruise arm Marella, Chief Executive Officer Fritz Joussen said in a briefing at the Frankfurt …

Bloomberg A Hennes & Mauritz AB unit was fined $41.4 million by a German data protection watchdog after managers trampled on the private lives of staff, storing details ranging from workers’ religious beliefs to their medical history. “Unfortunately, we had an incident in a subsidiary in Germany that was reported to the data protection authority at the end of last …

Bloomberg Barclays Plc’s leadership reshuffle puts two of the likely internal contenders to replace Jes Staley in the spotlight. The pair, who will together lead the investment bank, inherit a daunting task. Chief Risk Officer C.S. Venkatakrishnan, known as Venkat, will head markets while Paul Compton will oversee banking operations. They are charged with executing Staley’s vision of sustaining a …

Bloomberg Bank of France Governor and European Central Bank (ECB) policy maker Francois Villeroy de Galhau said the French government must be more careful about spending and debt that’s not linked to the novel coronavirus health-care crisis. The government must become more efficient as the pace of spending, stripping off Covid-19 measures, is accelerating “even more quickly” than before the …

Bloomberg Unicaja Banco SA is moving closer to a long-mooted takeover of Spanish rival Liberbank as consolidation gathers pace among the nation’s financial institutions. The two banks have restarted informal talks with the help of advisers, according to people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. Liberbank is working with Deutsche …

Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank (SNB) is facing intensifying national scrutiny for its work culture as lawmakers focus on emerging allegations of discrimination against women. Twelve female members of parliament have tabled a motion asking how the SNB aims to boost the number of female managers, what it’s doing to prevent ill treatment and whether it has an ombudsman to …