International News

  Copenhagen / AFP Danish toy maker Lego announced a management shake-up to develop the brand beyond its iconic plastic bricks under the leadership of its veteran chief who brought the company back from the brink of bankruptcy. Chief executive Jorgen Vig Knudstorp took over Lego when it was on verge of collapse in 2004 and transformed it into one ...

  Bloomberg Verizon Communications Inc. agreed to sell its data-centers business to Equinix Inc. for $3.6 billion in cash as the company turns its focus to mobile video advertising. The deal includes 24 facilities across 15 metropolitan markets, according to a statement on Tuesday. Equinix, based in Redwood City, California, operates as a real estate investment trust, mostly holding interconnected ...

  Seoul / AFP South Korea’s most powerful tycoons, including de facto Samsung chief Lee Jae-Yong, stammered and squirmed on Tuesday under a verbal assault from a parliamentary committee probing a corruption scandal that has riveted the nation. Millions watched in astonishment as the televised hearing showed the heads of the country’s eight largest conglomerates being publicly chastised over donations ...

  Bloomberg Cyrus Mistry, the ousted chairman of Tata Group, accused its biggest shareholders of eroding governance at India’s largest business empire and portrayed himself as a defender of independent decision-making in a letter to investors in Tata companies. The conglomerate refuted his allegations. Mistry made his appeal on Monday before a series of extraordinary general meetings from Dec. 13 ...

  Bloomberg The death knell sounding for a US-led Pacific trade pact creates a vacuum that a separate Asia deal being championed by China should quickly fill, according to the Asian Development Bank. Negotiators at the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership meeting this week in Indonesia would normally hold talks without much public scrutiny. But the latest round comes after U.S. ...

  Bloomberg Investors and companies are getting a preview of how the Taiwan government’s plan to become “Asia’s Silicon Valley” might fare. Uber Technologies Inc., one of Silicon Valley’s most disruptive companies and valued at more than $60 billion, launched services in Taiwan in 2013. The app has been downloaded by more than a million people in four cities and ...

  Bloomberg Japan’s aging and shrinking population is causing labor shortages that should be helping workers win higher pay. But it’s not working out that way, in part because of low productivity in the areas of the greatest shortage, according to economists including Hideo Kumano at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute in Tokyo. Labor intensive sectors like hotels, restaurants and elderly ...

  Bloomberg Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson exposed fresh divisions in the UK government by declining to endorse a new proposal that Britain should consider paying the European Union for continued access to its markets after Brexit. In a series of television interviews on Sunday, Johnson steered clear of echoing Brexit Secretary David Davis and Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, ...

  Bloomberg One of the Nordic region’s biggest asset managers is adjusting its portfolio to reflect a lack of confidence in Europe and a growing faith in the prospects of a US boom. Ilmarinen, a Finnish pension fund that oversees about 36 billion euros ($38 billion) in assets, plans to adjust its investments so it’s no longer underweight the US, ...

  Bloomberg US regulators are calling out AT&T and Verizon for exempting their own video apps from data caps on customers’ cellphones. This may not result in any changes in how the wireless carriers operate, however, as agency leaders appointed by Donald Trump, the incoming president, are expected to look more favorably on such practices. The Federal Communications Commission sent ...