Bloomberg Southwest Airlines Co increased the number of workers it wants to hire by 16% to 5,200, part of an effort to ease flight disruptions and reduce overtime, even as the carrier pares service. The airline wants to add the new employees by the end of November to reduce delays and cancellations, Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said. It has ...

Bloomberg Japanese department store operator H2O Retailing Corp said on Tuesday it will increase its stake in grocery store owner Kansai Super Market Ltd and make it a subsidiary. H2O said in a statement that it will buy newly-issued and existing shares from Kansai Super Market until it owns a 58% stake in the company, which will remain listed. H2O ...

Bloomberg Digital-first jewellery company Brilliant Earth Group Inc filed for an initial public offering, leading a flurry of planned listings. The San Francisco-based company in its filing listed the size of the offering as $100 million, a placeholder that will change when terms of the share sale are set. Amplitude Inc, saying it’s pioneering a new category it calls digital ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong’s retailers saw consumption growth slow more than expected in July as social distancing measures to control the virus continued to constrain spending and local shoppers awaited the arrival of electronic vouchers the following month. Retail sales value was HK$27.2 billion ($3.5 billion), up 2.9% from a year ago, according to a government report. That’s well short of ...

Bloomberg The US officially ended its military presence in Afghanistan on Tuesday with the final flight out of Kabul, concluding two decades of American involvement touched off by the September 11 terrorist attacks. “I’m here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the military mission to evacuate American citizens, third-country nationals and vulnerable Afghans,” ...

Bloomberg Japan’s Defense Ministry is seeking a record $50 billion annual budget that would entail the largest percentage jump in spending in eight years as it seeks to bolster its capabilities amid simmering tensions with China. If granted in full, the 5.5 trillion yen budget request for the year starting in April would amount to a 2.6% increase on the ...

Bloomberg Angela Merkel took direct aim at efforts by Finance Minister Olaf Scholz to assume her mantle to help topple her conservative bloc in the September 26 election. Scholz, who has engineered an unlikely poll surge for his Social Democratic party to become the favorite for chancellor, has conducted an unsubtle campaign to project himself as the rightful successor of ...

Bloomberg China’s top leaders will meet in November to discuss party history and achievements, just as President Xi Jinping takes aim at the nation’s yawning wealth gap and crackdowns on the tech sector. The Communist Party’s highest decision making body, the Politburo, fixed the month for the sixth plenum, a gathering of the larger Central Committee, state broadcaster China Central ...

Bloomberg The engine of the German economy is turning into a brake in the face of a global supply crunch, threatening to derail the nation’s recovery. While its strong focus on manufacturing helped Europe’s largest economy fare better than its more service-heavy peers in the region during Covid-19 lockdowns, Germany’s rebound is now at risk as companies report shortages of ...

Bloomberg British companies are expecting to raise prices and boost wages amid the strongest business confidence in more than four years, according to a survey published on Tuesday. More than a third of firms anticipate increasing wages by at least 2%, reflecting labour shortages, and almost half plan price hikes, the latest Lloyds Business Barometer shows. Overall confidence rebounded to ...