International News

  Bloomberg AT&T Inc.’s aggressive pricing strategies in Mexico are causing the company to lose “a lot” of money, said Carlos Slim, the billionaire who controls the phone giant’s biggest rival. “You can see it in their balance sheets,” he said. AT&T’s low-cost plans are taking market share from other competitors but not from Slim’s America Movil SAB, which has ...

  Bloomberg The $1.5 billion privatizations of two of China’s biggest solar companies have been thrown into doubt because of concerns they may run afoul of a government effort to keep more of the nation’s money supply at home. Trina Solar Ltd. and JA Solar Holdings Co., whose chief executives have separately proposed buying back the shares they listed in ...

  Bloomberg Vietnam is seeking about $1.2 billion in overseas loans for its only oil refinery before a share sale in 2017, to increase output and meet demand in one of Southeast Asia’s fastest growing economies. “The expansion will help our refinery operate more efficiently since it will boost the overall output by 30 percent and help cut production costs,” ...

  Bloomberg SoftBank Group Corp. is close to tying up $100 billion for a technology fund that it announced with the government of Saudi Arabia, the Japanese company’s founder and Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son said. “I am talking to a few investors and I think we are oversubscribed,” Son said at an event in New Delhi on Friday, without ...

  Bloomberg Malaysia said it would provide greater hedging flexibility in its onshore currency market after the central bank’s moves last month to discourage speculators saw the ringgit tumble toward its weakest since 1998. Overseas and domestic fund managers will be allowed to manage their foreign exchange exposure of as much as 25 percent of invested assets, the central bank ...

  Bloomberg The boardroom battles at the $100-billion Tata Group business empire have escalated into a Twitter war of the kind corporate India has never seen. Thousands of tweets with hashtags such as #WadiaTruthsTataLies, #CyrusMistryforGovernance and #RaTantrum are trending, steered by supporters of deposed chairman Cyrus Mistry. On the other side are #TataForIndia and #Support4Tata, maneuvered by the supporters of ...

  London / AFP Oil prices rose on Thursday, building on a surge triggered by OPEC’s output decision. World crude prices soared almost 10 percent on Wednesday after OPEC hammered out a deal to cut oil output for the first time in eight years. Prices were up nearly 3 percent in Thursday trading. Joshua Mahony, market analyst at IG trading ...

  Bloomberg Indonesia is widening its tax net to target global technology giants like Google and Facebook Inc., a strategy that’s raising red flags for fear it may deter foreign investment. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati is seeking to squeeze more revenue out of an economy that’s been hit by weak commodity prices and subdued demand from China, Indonesia’s biggest ...

  Bloomberg China’s biggest state-owned companies will see “dramatic changes” in the next few years as they may downsize and become more efficient, according to the former chairman of two of the country’s biggest producers. Chinese oil companies have “tremendous room” to improve efficiency and will be “suffering for the next few years” amid the oil crash that’s pushed prices ...

  Bloomberg Nokia smartphones will make a comeback next year, and the current owners of the Finnish brand are betting that the connection it built with billions of consumers during a decade of dominance hasn’t been broken. HMD Global has secured exclusive rights to use the brand for smartphones from Nokia Oyj for the coming 10 years, and will announce ...