Bloomberg Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. is nearing a preliminary agreement to acquire Shire Plc after the Japanese drugmaker sweetened its roughly $60 billion bid for the biotechnology company, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The two companies have been working on a tentative agreement on price and might announce a preliminary accord as early as Tuesday, the people said, ...

Bloomberg Investors hunting for clues to the iPhone X’s reception can take a deeper look at its main manufacturing partners. And the latest doesn’t look good. Apple Inc.’s five largest device assemblers reported a sharp slowdown after peaking at the end of last year, suggesting demand for the high-end device may have faded just a quarter after its release. While ...

Bloomberg Alphabet Inc. is pushing efforts to roll back the most comprehensive biometric privacy law in the US, even as the company and its peers face heightened scrutiny after the unauthorised sharing of data at Facebook Inc. While Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were publicly apologising this month for failing to protect users’ information, Google’s lobbyists were drafting measures to ...

Bloomberg AT&T Inc. attacked the US government expert who disputes the company’s claim that its takeover of Time Warner Inc. would lead to $2.5 billion in annual cost savings, forcing him to admit on the witness stand that such a deal would probably result in efficiencies. Rob Walters, a lawyer for AT&T, tried to undermine the Justice Department’s expert, Ronald ...

Bloomberg SAP SE increased its sales outlook for the year to reflect a major acquisition and an accelerating cloud business, as Europe’s biggest software company benefited from increased global IT spending. New cloud bookings, a keenly watched metric because it indicates future sales growth, grew 25 percent at constant currencies in the first quarter, the Walldorf, Germany-based company said on ...

Bloomberg Britain was in surplus on its day-to-day budget for the first full fiscal year since the early 2000s, a milestone that is almost certain to revive calls for an end to austerity. Revenue exceeded spending by 112 million pounds ($156 million) in the 12 months through March, meaning Britain is now borrowing only to finance capital investment, figures from ...

Bloomberg After two weeks of convulsions caused by US sanctions against United .Co. Rusal, the metals market was braced for more mayhem: many traders were betting the Russian aluminum giant was just days away from having to shut plants from Sweden to Jamaica. Then, the US Treasury threw a potential lifeline by making clear it’s not pushing for the company’s ...

The global economy is on the mend — but will the recovery be quashed by too much worldwide debt? Why are President Donald Trump’s tariffs such a bad deal for the US economy? It’s not just because they might start a trade war. It’s because of tax theory. Now, most tax theory is incredibly boring. (Hopefully my former economics professors ...

The world’s biggest champion of clean-energy vehicles has opened its arms to embattled electric-car maker Tesla Inc. Or so it seems. Beijing is removing caps on foreign ownership of automaker ventures, widening access to its critically important, high-margin car market. The limits will be rescinded over five years, with restrictions on electric cars to go this year. At first blush, ...

For investors in Vietnam, discretion is increasingly the better part of valor. You won’t see any sign of caution in the current IPO frenzy, though. Far from slowing down, Southeast Asia’s busiest market for stock offerings over the past year seems to be revving up. GIC Pte, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, is spending about $850 million for a 7.1 percent ...