International News

  Washington / AFP US regulators have given trading group IEX a green light to launch a new stock exchange, which will operate at a slightly slower speed of trading, the Securities and Exchange Commission said. Investors Exchange (IEX) will introduce a small delay or “speedbump” of 350 milliseconds on orders to buy and sell stock, in an attempt to level ...

  New York / AFP Shares of Oi SA tumbled on speculation that Brazil’s most indebted telecommunications operator is closer to filing for bankruptcy protection after documents showed little sign of progress in talks with bondholders. The documents give a glimpse into just how complicated the restructuring is. Rio de Janeiro-based Oi, which has about 50 billion reais in debt ($14.5 ...

  Beijing / AFP China’s total borrowings were more than double its gross domestic product (GDP) last year, a government economist said, warning that debt linkages between the state and industry could be “fatal” for the world’s second largest economy. The country’s debt has ballooned as Beijing has made getting credit cheap and easy in an effort to stimulate slowing growth, ...

  Seoul / AFP Samsung Electronics said on Thursday it had agreed to buy US cloud computing company Joyent — the latest in a series of start-up acquisitions aimed at strengthening the South Korean giant’s software capacity. The purchase of the San Francisco-based firm would provide Samsung with its own cloud platform to support its main mobile business and connect ...

  Beijing / AFP Chinese ride-hailing app Didi Chuxing, a bitter rival of US-based Uber, has raised $7.3 billion in one of the world’s largest private equity financing rounds, the company said on Thursday. Didi is locked in a war of attrition with Uber over drivers and riders but claims almost 90 percent of the market in the world’s most ...

  Colombo / AFP Sri Lanka’s cabinet approved the introduction of a capital gains tax for the first time in 14 years, as the island battles a revenue crisis that has forced an IMF bailout. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s tax plans come after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) this month released the first tranche of a $1.5 billion loan in ...

  Tokyo/ Bloomberg Toshiba Corp., the world’s biggest supplier of turbines used to produce electricity from the heat trapped underground, will expand its geothermal power business into operation and maintenance services as it aims to extend its lead in a global market dominated by a handful of competitors. “We are just doing turbines now but we want to take full ...

  Bloomberg Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen seems to be coming around to what her one-time rival, Lawrence Summers, has been arguing for a while: Some of the forces holding down interest rates may be long-lasting and secular. That’s reflected in a marked downgrade in rate projections released by policy makers after their meeting on Wednesday. Six of 17 now ...

  Bloomberg The world’s most prominent oil forecaster, the International Energy Agency, anticipates near-equilibrium between supply and demand in global crude markets next year. If OPEC members can’t resolve some massive output disruptions, that will turn into a significant shortfall. World oil production in 2017 will very nearly match consumption, ending several years of oversupply, the Paris-based IEA forecast on ...

  Bloomberg Brazil’s Acting President Michel Temer proposed to legislators spending caps that are designed to shrink a near-record budget deficit and restore investor confidence in Latin America’s largest economy. The proposal would amend the constitution, essentially freezing current government expenditures in inflation-adjusted terms through 2036, though there would be the possibility of adjustments after the first 10 years, according ...