Bloomberg General Electric Co. agreed to combine its oil and gas business with Baker Hughes Inc., creating an industry giant with a broader suite of offerings amid the ongoing slump in crude prices. GE will own a 62.5 percent stake in the combined provider of oilfield services, which will be publicly traded and have $32 billion in sales, the ...

  Bloomberg UK software company FreeAgent Holdings Ltd. has said it plans an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market for small, growth-oriented companies. Edinburgh, Scotland- based FreeAgent provides cloud-based accounting software for what it calls “micro-businesses,” a term it defines as companies with fewer than 10 employees. Its decision to float bucks strong headwinds in the ...

  Bloomberg When US auto sales numbers arrive on Tuesday, Nissan Motor Co. is expected to look pretty good — or at least less bad than its competition. The Japanese automaker’s sales slipped just 1.5 percent in October, compared with drops of 6.9 percent for General Motors and 11 percent for Ford, analysts estimate. Behind Nissan’s result, though, is a ...

  Reuters Major stock markets in the Middle East rose slightly on Monday, outperforming sluggish bourses in Asia and Europe, as Saudi banks continued rebounding on the back of October’s huge international bond issue by their government. The bond issue has allowed the government to suspend, at least temporarily, domestic bond sales and, in conjunction with other steps, this has ...

LONDON / AP The revelation that the FBI has opened a new investigation into U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s private email server weighed on global stock markets on Monday, a little more than a week from election day. Investors around the world also have a raft of potentially market-moving data and events to monitor this week, culminating with Friday’s U.S. ...

  SAN FRANCISCO / AP YouTube has emerged as a break-out star in Google’s cast of services as the online video site upstages cable television for a younger generation of viewers looking for amusement, news and music on their smartphones. The trend is contributing to an advertising shift away from traditional network television programming to the more eclectic and diversified ...

  Bloomberg Honda Motor Co. will spearhead its artificial intelligence efforts out of a new lab in Tokyo so that researchers can work closely with its engineers to commercialize the technology. Honda, based in Tokyo, will start the R&D center next year and combine existing AI teams in Silicon Valley, Europe and Japan at the downtown location, according to Yoshiyuki ...

  Relaxnews Microsoft made several announcements concerning its intention to bring 3D technologies to everyone at its latest Windows 10 event. The firm aims to bring affordable tools to the public at large, with a range of headsets and upcoming developments for Windows. The first step in Microsoft’s vision to bring 3D to everyone is to provide easy-to-use tools for ...

  Bloomberg IBM is teaming up with Slack Technologies Inc. to make it easier for companies to build custom chatbots into the startup’s workplace-messaging systems, the latest move by Big Blue to add more diverse business cases for its Watson artificial-intelligence technology. The two companies will release a developer toolkit that includes Watson technologies and can integrate easily into Slack, ...

  Bloomberg Millennials’ seemingly unquenchable thirst for coffee is helping to push global demand to a record just as supplies are tightening. Americans are becoming java junkies at an earlier age, and young adults are increasing their daily consumption at a fast enough pace to make up for declines by older folks. The result: Demand in the US, the world’s ...