International News

  Bloomberg Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chairman Warren Buffett is backing a group bidding for Yahoo! Inc.’s Internet assets, people familiar with the matter said. The consortium, which includes Quicken Loans Inc. founder Dan Gilbert, is in the second round of bidding for Yahoo’s assets, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the bidding process is private. Buffett ...

  Bloomberg Brazil’s real joined a selloff in global currencies against the dollar as newly appointed Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles refrained from giving details on how to tackle the nation’s ballooning fiscal deficit. The real erased its gain for the week as the U.S. currency climbed after retail data re-ignited speculation the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates this year, ...

  Buenos Aires, Argentina / AFP Assets belonging to former Argentine president Cristina Kirchner were frozen after she was charged with damaging national finances by manipulating the Central Bank’s exchange operations during her last months in office. Federal Judge Claudio Bonadio said it was “evident that the then president gave instructions — which without a doubt were developed jointly — to ...

  Guatemala City, Guatemala / AFP Business chiefs from across Central America made a joint plea to the region’s political leaders to ratify a WTO agreement aimed at reducing poor infrastructure and other barriers to trade. “There is consensus in the Central American private sector that the governments of the region urgently need to take action so all Central American countries ...

  Bloomberg Tesla Motors Inc., the electric-car maker run by billionaire Elon Musk, hired Audi AG’s Peter Hochholdinger to help oversee production as it seeks to boost vehicle output about 10-fold by 2018. Hochholdinger will be vice president of vehicle production, Tesla said. He’ll be expected to boost production of Model S and Model X cars while building a manufacturing ...

  New Delhi / Bloomberg India’s parliament passed a bill to overhaul archaic bankruptcy laws, taking Prime Minister Narendra Modi a step closer to fulfilling his pledge to make it easier to do business in the world’s fastest growing major economy. The upper house approved the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Act days after it was cleared in the lower house. The ...

    Tokyo / Bloomberg Nissan Motor Co. agreed to purchase a 34 percent stake in Mitsubishi Motors Corp., as Japan’s second-largest automaker comes to the aid of its minicar partner rocked by a fuel-economy testing scandal. Mitsubishi Motors will sell about 237.4 billion yen ($2.2 billion) in shares to Nissan, according to a filing Thursday. The purchase is poised ...

  Taipei / AFP Toshiba said on Thursday that it suffered a $4.4 billion full-year net loss as the troubled conglomerate booked a massive write-down of its US nuclear unit, but said the worst was over as it forecast profits for the current business year. A once proud pillar of corporate Japan, Toshiba has been besieged by problems, most notably ...

  Tokyo / AFP Japanese electronics maker Sharp said on Thursday it suffered a $2.3 billion annual loss and released no forecast for the current business year as it assesses the impact of its acquisition by Taiwan’s Hon Hai. The Osaka-based also said an executive of Hon Hai, the world’s biggest electronics supplier, will take over as president. In March, ...

  Tokyo/ Bloomberg Utilities and other companies in Japan pushing ahead with new investments in coal-power plants risk creating 6.22 trillion yen ($57 billion) of stranded assets amid shifts in energy policy and the economics of power generation, according to a study by Oxford University’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. The amount of coal-fired generating capacity planned or ...