It wasn’t a dream or an exaggeration by cautious Facebook Inc. executives. The company’s financial results are weakening, just as executives warned they would a few months ago. Everyone knew that at some point Facebook wouldn’t be able to continue posting eye-popping revenue growth and profit margins. What was surprising was how quickly the brakes came on. Early in 2018, ...

Italy may have dodged one blow, but its fight is far from over. After escaping a ratings downgrade from S&P Global Ratings last week, the government bond auction was the next test of investor appetite. October 30 saw 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion) of five-year and 2.5 billion euros of 10-year bonds offered. With the country enmeshed in a budget ...

As it does each year, the European Commission is digging into the budgets of euro-zone member states to see if they comply with the bloc’s fiscal rules. The recent slowing of the European economy complicates this work — or ought to. It suggests that Brussels should not be overly strict. The commission needs to sanction serious violations, but it can ...

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond barely uttered the B-word in the more than 70 minutes it took him to unveil the latest UK budget on Monday. Inevitably, though, Brexit was the elephant stomping around the room — or, rather, one of them. Exit negotiations with the European Union (EU) are stalled over a disagreement about how to keep ...

Watch out HSBC Holdings Plc. The digital banking revolution is coming for all the easy money the UK-based bank has long taken for granted. Hong Kong was HSBC’s birthplace as the Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp., and the former British colony remains its single biggest market, a source of sticky deposits and ready borrowers. For now, that’s still boosting the ...

As 20 finalist cities in the US compete for the right to host Amazon’s second headquarters, Google has had to drop plans for a campus in Berlin after the project was rejected by residents and the leftist city government proved unenthusiastic. There are two ways of looking at this: It confirms a lasting US advantage over Europe when it comes ...

Bloomberg The Bank of Japan stayed the course on monetary stimulus while confirming in updated forecasts that it won’t meet its inflation target for years to come. The central bank left its policy interest rates and asset-purchase targets unchanged, while forecasting that inflation will remain below its 2 percent target until at least early 2021. This will leave it even ...

Bloomberg The European Central Bank won’t make much progress raising interest rates because it’ll tighten just as the US economy slows, predicts Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Andrew Bosomworth. “I don’t think Europe will get very far above zero,” Bosomworth, a managing director at Pimco, said in an interview in Frankfurt this week. “There’ll be a very short window in which ...

Bloomberg Standard Chartered Plc is working on a three-year plan to improve profitability as a share slump this year puts pressure on the emerging markets lender to boost returns. While operating expenses fell by 1 percent in the third quarter and were below estimates, its key measure of profitability is still lagging. The bank said on Wednesday that it will ...

Bloomberg UBS Group AG is weighing acquisitions and joint-ventures for its asset management business to help it compete with larger rivals, people with knowledge of the matter said. Targets may include UK and US asset managers focussed on retail clients and specialised asset managers in areas such as real estate, the people said, asking not to be identified because the ...