Bloomberg WeWork Cos., the world’s largest provider of shared work spaces, will invest $500 million in Southeast Asia and South Korea, as the New York-based company steps up its expansion plans in global markets. As part of the effort, WeWork will acquire Spacemob, a Singapore-based co-working startup founded in early 2016 by entrepreneur Turochas “T” Fuad and backed by Vertex ...

Bloomberg Prosecutors demanded a 12-year jail term for Lee Jae-yong, accusing the billionaire vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Co. of bribing a presidential confidante to increase his control over the world’s biggest maker of smartphones and memory chips. Lee has been in detention since February and is the highest-profile business figure drawn into a scandal that led to the ouster ...

Bloomberg Living in the world’s most-expensive property market means having to set aside more than half your income as mortgage payments. Hong Kong’s mortgage-payment-to-income ratio rose to 54.2 percent in June, the highest since 1998, figures from Centaline Property Agency show. The low affordability is a result of the steep rise in home prices, which have kept soaring despite efforts ...

Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co. is introducing a new model for its Galaxy S8 smartphone line featuring a metal frame, larger battery and shatter-resistant screen. The Galaxy S8 Active, which the South Korean company says has passed military specification testing, is geared toward users in environments such as extreme outdoor sporting events and construction sites, where a standard device may succumb ...

Bloomberg France is working with Germany and other partners to plug loopholes that have allowed US tech giants like Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to minimise taxes and grab market share in Europe at the expense of the continent’s own companies. France will propose the “simpler rules” for a “real taxation” of tech firms at ...

Bloomberg UK consumers cut back on spending for a third month in July as house-price growth slowed sharply, dealing yet another blow to the economy. The broad-based weakness is being blamed on a squeeze on pockets as inflation outpaces wage growth as well as concerns about the health of the economy. The latest figures leave both household expenditure and the ...

Bloomberg The German economy is all about records. Highs and lows. Never in the 27 years since the country’s reunification have more people held a job. Never have fewer people been unemployed. Companies haven’t assessed the business climate more positively and consumers have never been more optimistic about future income. That’s where the records end. Wage growth is lagging the ...

Bloomberg German industrial production unexpectedly slipped in June as manufacturing and construction caused a temporary blip in the growth spurt of Europe’s largest economy. Output, adjusted for seasonal swings and inflation, fell 1.1 percent in June after rising 1.2 percent in May, the Economy Ministry in Berlin said on Monday. That’s the first drop in six months in the typically ...

Bloomberg Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said the French government’s $12 billion divestment program will take years to execute and he’s working on identifying which assets will be sold. “It won’t be in one go — we won’t do the whole thing over 15 days,” Le Maire said in an interview in his Paris office. “That wouldn’t reasonable.” He said ...

Bloomberg Sprint Corp. has resumed preliminary talks about a potential merger with T-Mobile US Inc., people with knowledge of the matter said, as billionaire Masayoshi Son explores ways to build scale for a carrier facing increasing competition in the US wireless market. The two wireless operators restarted discussions after Sprint’s exclusive negotiating period with Comcast Corp. and Charter Communications Inc. ...