Bloomberg Royal Philips NV shares fell to the lowest level in seven years after missing earnings expectations and warning trade wars and Brexit will weigh on its business. The Dutch health-technology company’s profit and sales growth missed estimates, with the shortfall most notably at the personal-health unit that makes products like electric toothbrushes, shavers and equipment to help with sleep ...

Bloomberg Four-fifths of UK companies have cut or withheld investment because of the uncertainty caused by Brexit, Britain’s biggest business lobby said. Some 58 percent of businesses have made plans to cut jobs, adjust supply chains, relocate production and services or stockpile products if no clarity emerges soon on Britain’s future relationship with the European Union after Brexit, according to ...

Bloomberg Short seller Fahmi Quadir, who’s betting against Tesla Inc., said the carmaker faces risks to its supply chain because some vendors haven’t been getting paid. Quadir, the founder and chief investment officer of Safkhet Capital LP, made a name for herself by shorting the drugmaker formerly known as Valeant Pharmaceuticals around its peak in 2015. She said her firm ...

Bloomberg Netflix Inc. will make its most important announcement of the year on Tuesday, reporting how many new customers signed up for the world’s largest paid online TV service over the past three months. With tech stocks taking a drubbing this month, investors will be seeking reassurance that the company’s disappointing second quarter was just a blip and not a ...

Bloomberg Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom, in his first public appearance since leaving the photo-sharing app, said he felt comfortable moving on because it was already on a path to broader success at parent company, Facebook Inc. “It didn’t feel done by any stretch of the imagination, but it felt like it was in orbit, and if we let go and ...

Competition is dying. That’s the latest complaint against American business. We have too many super-sized firms, excessively large and unnaturally profitable. Dubious mergers, permitted by toothless antitrust laws, boost companies’ market power and squash rivals. The lifeblood of a dynamic economy is competition; its erosion — if true — would be a momentous event. But is it true? Let’s see. ...

There’s gold in them than holes. That’s my stab at an elevator pitch for oilfield-services veteran Andrew Gould’s latest venture. The former Schlumberger Ltd. CEO’s investment vehicle, Sentinel Energy Services Inc., announced it will buy Strike LLC, which specialises in maintaining and repairing pipelines. Once the $854 million deal closes, Strike will become a public company. It is interesting that ...

Is Daimler AG out to prove that carmakers are the ultimate value trap? Its second profit warning in fourth months felt like a capitulation. A kitchen sink would struggle to contain the list of excuses the German car and truck maker produced to explain the latest profit shortfall on October 19. Unspecified diesel issues, disappointing bus sales, and the potential ...

You have to hand it to Europe’s regulators. They rarely miss a chance to antagonize an American tech company, no matter what the cost to their own people. In a blog post, Alphabet Inc.’s Google announced that it will start charging phone-makers that want to pre-install some of its apps and services for devices sold in Europe. This was the ...

A common refrain from some long-term China observers is that the government in Beijing can just wait out a significantly more confrontational US trade policy now that the initial shock is past. After all, the uncontested Asian powerhouse is on track to be the largest economy in the world. It also has a long tradition of government that shrewdly takes ...