Bloomberg Sales of previously owned US homes unexpectedly fell in May for a second month as a lack of inventory and elevated asking prices weighed on demand, National Association of Realtors (NAR) data showed. The drop in sales was led by declines in purchases of single-family homes and cheaper properties, according to NAR, indicating that the market is being driven by ...

President Donald Trump and the Democrats can’t agree on anything, except one big thing: China. After the administration announced plans on June 15 to impose tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports, Charles Schumer, the Democrats’ Senate leader, called the decision “on the money.” That was a startling statement on a startling fact: China has few friends left in Washington, ...

While everyone else is watching the World Cup, biotech bankers are keeping busy. This week will bring a bumper crop of baby biopharmas into the market, with seven expected to go public in the US — the most in more than three years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The list includes companies working on cutting-edge medical research, from potentially ...

Grab Holdings Inc. seems pretty pleased with itself at nabbing a $1 billion investment from Toyota Motor Corp. The idea isn’t new, but this is the biggest financing by a car company of a ride-hailing service. Grab ought to be wary of such largess in a deal that looks a bit like vendor financing. The Southeast Asian startup needn’t be ...

US President Donald Trump may sincerely think he’s battling to win Americans a better deal on trade with China. In fact, he’s making a better deal harder to achieve — and threatening to inflict grave economic damage on the US economy in the process. In the past few days, Trump has dramatically cut the chances of a negotiated solution to ...

Many question whether the European Union has the raw power – as well as the willpower — to engage in the trade war President Donald Trump has started with much of the rest of the world. But the matter is more complex for Europe than who can emerge victorious from an exchange of blows. A purely economic cost-benefit analysis would ...

As rich countries welcome autonomous cars, trucks and boats onto their roads and waterways, the developing world is grappling with a humbler revolution: automated farming. What was once the world’s most labour-intensive profession may be soon run by smartphones. And that could change agriculture as profoundly as mechanisation did last century. This shift will affect how food is grown and ...

Facebook Inc. keeps finding new and potentially annoying places to sell advertisements in its digital hangouts. That’s good news for the company’s bottom line, but it also may signal weakness. Along with Facebook’s controversies of late have been a steady drip of disclosures about fresh spots for Facebook’s paid commercial messages. The company recently started testing different types of ads ...

Bloomberg Banks in the European Union won a battle to soften new rules on how failing firms are restructured, as the bloc’s parliament staked out its position on a sweeping overhaul of rules for the financial industry. Lawmakers backed a cap on the loss-absorbing liabilities that regulator can force troubled banks to hold. The ceiling could help to hold down ...

Bloomberg Norway’s central bank is seen firming up plans to lift interest rates “after summer” as the richest Scandinavians leave their oil shock behind them. As Norway moves from a recovery to an outright expansion, policy makers in Oslo are becoming less focussed on the krone and are preparing to tighten ahead of colleagues in Frankfurt and Stockholm. “Norges Bank ...