International News

Bloomberg Spain will raise its minimum wage by an inflation-busting 8% after the government and unions struck a deal, brushing aside calls from business groups to refrain from increases at a time of economic uncertainty. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who faces a battle for reelection this year, has faced fierce opposition on the issue from industry lobby groups, which had ...

  Bloomberg UK house prices fell for a fifth month in January, the longest string of declines since the financial crisis more than a decade ago, Nationwide Building Society said Wednesday. The mortgage lender said average home costs fell 0.6% this month and by a revised 0.3% in December, steeper than its previous estimate. The monthly decline was also more ...

Bloomberg Peru’s inflation is forecast to have jumped to the highest level in a quarter century as official data start to reflect the damage wrought by two months of social unrest and highway blockades. The January report, due to be published Wednesday at 10 a.m. local time by the national statistics agency, is attracting greater-than-usual interest as economists try to ...

Bloomberg Britain faces the bleakest two years of any major industrial nation with a recession in 2023 and the slowest growth of peers in 2024, the International Monetary Fund predicts. The UK will be the only Group of Seven member whose economy will shrink this year, with a contraction of 0.6%, the IMF said. That makes Britain’s outlook even worse ...

  Bloomberg Falling values are the latest headache for landlords in Europe who need to refinance their debt. It’s a problem for their lenders too. There’s a gap of €51 billion ($55 billion) between the amount owed by commercial property owners across Germany, France and the UK and the credit likely to be available for refinancing when the borrowings mature, ...

  Bloomberg Norway’s $1.3 trillion sovereign wealth fund reported its biggest loss since the 2008 financial crisis after markets were pummeled by faster inflation, higher credit costs and the fallout from the war in Ukraine. The fund that manages Norway’s fossil wealth lost 14.1% in 2022, equivalent to about $164 billion, according to a statement on Tuesday. It’s the world’s ...

  Bloomberg Brexit is costing the UK economy £100 billion a year ($124 billion), with the effects spanning everything from business investment to the ability of companies to hire workers. An analysis by Bloomberg Economics three years after Britain left the European Union paints a bleak picture of the damage done by the way the split has been implemented by ...

Bloomberg French labor unions are leading a second day of mass strikes and protests on Tuesday against raising the retirement age in a test of the momentum driving defiance to Emmanuel Macron’s signature economic reform. The country’s rail operator, SNCF, expects only one-third of high-speed TGVs to run and urged people to work from home. Subway and commuter trains serving ...

Bloomberg Chancellor Olaf Scholz is using a trip to Latin America to help Germany secure additional supplies of the lithium that car giants like Mercedes-Benz Group AG and Volkswagen AG need for their electric-vehicle batteries. Chile is the world’s second-largest supplier of lithium after Australia and much of its output is currently gobbled up by China. Scholz, who met with ...

  Bloomberg Denmark proposed to spend an extra 2.3 billion kroner ($340 million) on inflation aid, mainly targeting senior citizens. The government will now start talks with opposition parties in parliament to reach a broad deal and decide on the details, Finance Minister Nicolai Wammen told reporters in Copenhagen on Monday. Consumers in Denmark have been hit heavily by accelerating ...