Bloomberg Infosys Ltd.’s co-founder and former chairman Narayana Murthy is calling off his fight with the board, saying the company will deal with the questions about corporate governance that have been raised. Billionaire Murthy and several other founders had raised questions about the management of Asia’s second-largest IT services company, citing a spike in compensation for Chief Executive Officer ...
Read More »International News
Japan’s GDP highlights export risks that Abe hopes to curb
Bloomberg The strength in exports that fueled a fourth straight quarter of economic growth in Japan underscores just how important it is for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to ease trade tensions with the Trump administration. Net shipments abroad added 0.2 percentage point to gross domestic product in the three months through December, while consumption in Japan was flat as ...
Read More »Germany firms zone in on global risks overshadowing economy
Bloomberg Germany’s economy is running at full speed, yet some of its biggest companies are far from getting carried away about the future. Thyssenkrupp AG last week became the latest of the country’s top firms to intertwine words of caution in what’s shaping up to be a strong earnings season, joining peers like Siemens AG in warning against global ...
Read More »Valentine’s chocolate gets cheaper as cocoa supply swells
Bloomberg Buying your sweetheart a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates could be cheaper this year thanks to booming cocoa supplies. Growers are collecting bigger harvests in Latin America and in West Africa, which accounts for about 70 percent of global production. The output gains have pushed cocoa futures to the lowest since 2008, cutting costs for companies including Mondelez ...
Read More »UK house prices climb to record as shortage of homes worsens
Bloomberg The average price of a UK home hit a new record in January, continuing an upward trend that’s in part being driven by a supply-demand imbalance. The 0.3 percent increase in values lifted the average to 300,169 pounds ($374,000), Acadata and LSL said in a report on Monday. Annual growth was 3.1 percent, and prices are now double ...
Read More »VW CEO slams infighting as spat escalates over worker agreement
Bloomberg Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Matthias Mueller sought to calm nerves at the German carmaker as festering disputes with labor leaders and allegations from former Chairman Ferdinand Piech threatened to disrupt efforts to overcome its diesel-cheating scandal. “You’re all certainly as irritated as I am, because Volkswagen needs something totally different now: namely, concentration in order to cleanly ...
Read More »Nordic property investors cash in after price surge
Bloomberg Property owners are likely to start cashing in to a greater extent this year after an eight-year rally in prices across the Nordic real estate markets, according to Pangea Property Partners. Potential sellers include funds, companies that want to streamline their portfolios and private investors who see good exit opportunities, Pangea said in its Real Estate Outlook 2017 ...
Read More »Trump, Brexit pose risk to euro-area economy outlook
Bloomberg The election of Donald Trump in the US and the UK’s decision to leave the European Union are heightening economic risk in the euro area, the European Commission said, as it predicted growth would slow this year. In its first set of economic forecasts compiled since Trump’s victory and with the British government gearing up to officially trigger ...
Read More »Toyota’s trade heat from Trump toughens test of US demand
Bloomberg Toyota Motor Corp. recently ceded its title as the world’s best-selling automaker to arch-rival Volkswagen AG. Yet the Japanese company’s biggest adversary this year may be US President Donald Trump. Japan’s largest automaker expects profit to fall to 1.7 trillion yen ($15.1 billion) for the fiscal year ending next month, about a quarter less than the previous annual ...
Read More »Swiss needs to draw up new corporate tax plan to stay attractive
Bloomberg The Swiss government must come up with a new plan and figure out how to limit economic fallout after voters rejected its bid to reform corporate taxation to keep the country internationally competitive. Because Switzerland needs to end its current practice of giving thousands of multinationals tax breaks, the government will have to concoct a Plan B to ...
Read More »