International News

Bloomberg Italy’s credit rating outlook was raised to positive from stable by S&P Global Ratings, which said the progress in implementing reforms will boost economic growth, benefiting fiscal consolidation. S&P affirmed the BBB rating on Italy, which is two notches above junk. The country’s prospects are looking brighter as increasing rates of vaccination have allowed it to avoid renewed lockdowns. ...

Bloomberg Alphabet Inc’s Google is slashing the fees it takes from subscription services on its app store following pressure from developers and lawmakers. Beginning January 1, the Google Play Store will charge third-party subscription apps a 15% commission, the company said. Previously, subscription apps were charged 30% for first year, then 15% thereafter. Google also charged 15% for first $1 ...

Bloomberg The cost of hedging against inflation in the UK over the next decade rises to the highest level in 25 years as investors brace for price pressures in the economy to persist. The so-called 10-year breakeven rate climbed as much as 11 basis points to 4.25%, the highest since 1996. That predates the Bank of England’s independence in 1997, ...

Bloomberg Retailers in Canada reported fewer sales in September amid supply chain bottlenecks and a reopening of the economy that allowed consumers to spend more on services. Receipts likely fall 1.9%, a preliminary estimate by Statistics Canada indicated, after a gain of 2.1% in August — slightly ahead of a 2% consensus estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The ...

Bloomberg France’s 2022 budget deficit will be wider than forecast only a month ago after President Emmanuel Macron’s government announced plans to contain energy prices, hand out checks to more than half the population, and make high-risk investments in future industrial sectors. With just six months to go until elections, Prime Minister Jean Castex said that around 38 million people ...

Bloomberg Days before it hosts United Nations negotiations over how to ramp up the global fight against climate change, the UK released a sweeping plan to decarbonize its economy by targeting everything from the finance industry to home heating. The masterplan will give British politicians something to tout as they put pressure on other nations to raise their green ambitions ...

Bloomberg Poland threatened to stonewall talks on the European Union’s climate pact unless it receives access to the bloc’s recovery package, raising the stakes of a meeting of the bloc’s leaders on Thursday. Coal-dependent Poland seeks to gain some leverage over the EU by linking further talks on cutting greenhouse gas emissions to tapping billions of euros in pandemic recovery ...

Bloomberg A White House-backed clean power program that was rejected by Senator Joe Manchin could be resurrected as a grant program that would reward states that increase clean energy. Lawmakers have been working on a Clean Energy Challenge Grant Program for states as an alternative, Representative Jared Huffman, a California Democrat, said in a telephone interview following a meeting with ...

Bloomberg Argentina’s government is freezing prices on 1,432 household items in an effort to cool accelerating inflation ahead of November’s midterm election and the Christmas holidays. Prices will remain fixed until January 7 on the products, a larger list than the roughly 900 items government officials had originally pitched to companies and supermarkets last week. Talks between the government and ...

Bloomberg Governments need to fully commit to a European Union plan to increase the bloc’s share of global semiconductor production to 20% by 2030, Prime Minister Mario Draghi told lawmakers in Rome on Wednesday. “In order to make the ecological transition, in order to make the digital transition, there are no alternatives to state intervention,” Draghi said, noting that subsidies ...