International News

  BLOOMBERG South Korea’s Hollys Coffee, which popularized 430-calorie sweet potato lattes as an unusual alternative in the caffeine-addicted country, has started looking for a new owner. Buyout firm IMM Private Equity Inc. has kicked off an auction of its controlling stake in the homegrown cafe chain, which it is seeking to sell for as much as $300 million, according ...

  AFP A string of overseas investments has shone a new spotlight on Chinese conglomerate Fosun, after the mysterious disappearance — and re-emergence — of its tycoon chairman rattled investors. In the space of three days last week, the Shanghai-based company bought a stake in an Indian drugmaker for $1.26 billion, acquired a Brazilian investment firm and announced plans to ...

  Berlin / AFP German industrial giant Siemens lifted its annual earnings forecast on Thursday after booming demand for renewables fattened order books in the second quarter, but warned of increasing geopolitical risks. For the financial year ending September, the group said it expected profits per share between 6.50 and 6.70 euros ($7.24-7.46), compared with the 6.0 to 6.40 it ...

  Bloomberg Serco Group Plc shares surged to a 14-month high after the U.K. government-services contractor raised its profit target for a second time this year following quicker-than-expected cost savings and the pound’s plunge. Serco rose as much as 16 percent to 138 pence, the highest intraday price since June 3, 2015, and was up 14 percent at 12:18 p.m. ...

  The Hague / AFP Inflation in The Netherlands dipped into negative territory in July for the first time in nearly three decades, slipping to -0.30 percent, according to official statistics published on Thursday. “The last time that inflation was below zero was in December 1987,” the Central Statistics Office said. The news came after three months of stagnation when ...

  Brussels / AFP The European Union on Thursday hit China and Russia with anti-dumping duties on cold rolled steel imports after complaints by EU producers they were being forced out of the market. The European Commission said the levies, announced provisionally in February, will run for five years as Europe tries to cope with a global steel glut largely ...

  Brighton / AFP The world’s tallest moving observation tower, the i360, opens to the public on Thursday, a futuristic landmark that has transformed the historic seafront in the English tourist resort of Brighton. A 162-metre (530-foot) high steel tower is ringed by a doughnut-shaped glass observation pod that gently glides up and down. The design is meant to be ...

  Bloomberg The UK risks facing a deluge of residency applications as European Union citizens dash to formalize their right to stay in the wake of the Brexit vote. The warning comes from the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, which said in a report that registering more than 3 million European nationals already living in the U.K. would present a ...

  Brussels / AFP Eurozone economic activity managed a small gain in July despite Britain’s shock vote in June to quit the European Union, a closely watched survey showed on Wednesday. Data monitoring company IHS Markit said revised figures for its Composite Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for July came in at 53.2 points, up from 53.1 points in June. The ...

  Bloomberg German logistics group Deutsche Post said on Wednesday it had achieved its strongest-ever second-quarter operating result, boosted in large part by online shopping. “Our Post, eCommerce and Parcel division in particular contributed to the positive trend” that saw Deutsche Post increase its net profit to 541 million euros ($606 million), a 66-percent leap over the same period in ...