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 US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo will shorten his travel to Asia this week as the White House deals with the spread of the coronavirus among its top officials. Pompeo will visit Tokyo till October 6 for a meeting of the foreign ministers of four of the Indo-Pacific region’s biggest democracies, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a ...

Bloomberg UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he knows people feel angry over the way his government has handled the pandemic, but warned that coronavirus will make for a “very tough” winter, with difficulties lasting through Christmas and beyond. Johnson acknowledged public anger over the government’s handling of the pandemic, especially in areas subject to tight lockdown rules, but warned ...

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 ...

Bloomberg Consumer prices in the 19-nation euro area fall more than economists forecast in September, keeping up pressure on the European Central Bank (ECB) as it debates whether to add stimulus to support the recovery from the coronavirus recession. The inflation rate came in at -0.3%, slightly below the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey. Prices for services were a ...

Bloomberg Australia’s central bank does little deliberation, ignores opposing views and its decision-makers “seem hostile to a consideration of evidence or research,” according to Peter Tulip, a former senior member of its economic research department. “We have a board that does not understand monetary policy or statistical research,” Tulip said in a farewell email to colleagues when he resigned from ...

Bloomberg While Amazon.com Inc. and its FANG cohort have grabbed the headlines, some of the biggest stock-market winners in Europe during the coronavirus pandemic may be companies you’ve never heard of. Investors seeking stellar returns have been snapping up shares of small companies that range from e-commerce merchants to mobile-game makers. Shares of German retailers Westwing Group AG and Home24 ...