International News

  Bloomberg Brazil is moving to cast off the last shackles of government influence at iron-ore giant Vale SA — but not before replacing the CEO with someone more politically palatable. Murilo Ferreira’s six-year contract won’t be renewed when it expires in May, the Rio de Janeiro-based company said in a statement on Friday. The announcement came days after Vale ...

  Bloomberg Top US health insurance executives will meet on Monday with President Donald Trump, according to people familiar with plans for the session, a sign of the White House’s deepening involvement in efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare. Attendees will include chief executives of some of the biggest US health insurers, like UnitedHealth Group Inc., Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp., ...

  Bloomberg Pfizer Inc. said that it received two subpoenas from the US Attorney’s office in Massachusetts related to charities that help Medicare patients afford co-payments for drugs, the latest company to disclose involvement in the probe. The New York-based drugmaker said in a securities filing that it received subpoenas on December 2015 and on July 2016 requesting documents related ...

  Bloomberg Canadian consumer prices surged in January on the back of rising gasoline prices and new carbon levies, bringing inflation to the highest in more than two years. The consumer price index advanced 2.1 percent from a year earlier, Statistics Canada reported Friday from Ottawa, up from 1.5 percent in December. Economists had estimated a gain of 1.6 percent, ...

  Bloomberg Call it collateral damage. If Donald Trump delivers on threats to put punishing tariffs on Chinese goods, plenty of pain would be felt in Taiwan, a de facto US ally that Beijing considers a breakaway province. The island would be among the most vulnerable to economic spillover from any US-China trade war. More than 40 percent of the ...

  Bloomberg Australia’s government sold A$11 billion ($8.5 billion) of 11-year debt notes in its biggest-ever bond transaction, as investors hungry for higher yields set aside concerns stubborn budget deficits will cost the nation its AAA credit rating. It’s the third time in less than six months the South Pacific country has set a new borrowing record. It exceeds the ...

  Bloomberg Volkswagen AG is in advanced talks to team up with Tata Motors Ltd. as the German automaker takes another stab at India’s fast-growing demand for cars, according to people familiar with the matter. A deal to jointly develop vehicles for emerging markets may be announced at the Geneva auto show in early March, said the people, who asked ...

  Bloomberg A decade-long wait by India’s cash-hungry real estate and infrastructure developers may finally be nearing an end. Birla Sun Life Asset Management Co. estimates that real estate and infrastructure trusts will raise as much as 600 billion rupees ($9 billion) this year as India rolls out the much-anticipated investment products mooted in 2007. Sterlite Power Transmission Ltd. and ...

  Bloomberg The chairman of China’s top insurance regulator vowed to impose “stringent” rules and “severely” punish short-term speculation by insurers, the latest sign of tightening controls on the nation’s industry. The watchdog will also curb “aggressive” pricing and the “unreasonably” high returns of some insurance products, Xiang Junbo, Chairman of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, told reporters in Beijing. ...

  Bloomberg Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. was once one of the drug industry’s highest-flying companies. Now the pharmaceutical giant has gone from predator to prey, as its sagging stock price has invited in activist investors who are already forcing changes. It announced an agreement with Jana Partners LLC to add three board members, and later in the day activist investor Carl ...