International News

Bloomberg Britain and the European Union (EU) took their first step since Brexit to cooperate on financial services, agreeing on a new forum to discuss market regulation. The move could help finance firms in the City of London to eventually win back some access to the single market they lost when the UK left the EU. The two sides have ...

Bloomberg US consumer sentiment continued to improve in late March to a one-year high as more Americans got coronavirus vaccinations and business restrictions eased in many states. The University of Michigan’s final sentiment index increased to 84.9 from a preliminary March reading of 83, according to data. The median projection in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 83.6. A ...

Bloomberg Microsoft Corp. is in talks to acquire Discord Inc., a video-game chat community, for more than $10 billion. Discord has been talking to potential buyers and software giant Microsoft is in the running, but no deal is imminent, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. Discord is more likely to go public ...

Bloomberg Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has chosen a former Fox News executive to unleash his controversial brand of journalism on British screens. But David Rhodes insists he’s not bringing the US network’s brash playbook to London. “It wouldn’t work in this market,” the News UK TV president said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “If you look at News Corp.’s ...

Bloomberg Italy’s population shrank in 2020 by the most in over 100 years, as measured by the number of births minus deaths, with the coronavirus pandemic amplifying a trend that’s been underway since 2007, according to a report released by Istat. The number of deaths outnumbered births by 342 thousand, the most since 1918. The overall population fell by 384 ...

Bloomberg Germany’s Finance Ministry gave explicit backing in 2019 to financial regulator BaFin’s controversial approach to fraud accusations at Wirecard AG, raising questions about its role in one of the biggest corporate scandals in recent history. In a March 2019 phone call, Deputy Finance Minister Joerg Kukies gave the head of BaFin, Felix Hufeld, broad support for his efforts to ...

Bloomberg Southeast Asian countries lose out on as much as $6 billion a year as most of their single-use plastics are thrown out rather than recovered and recycled, the World Bank said in a new study. More than 75% of recyclable plastics in Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines are left to waste, representing a “significant untapped business opportunity” in the ...

Bloomberg China’s local governments had 14.8 trillion yuan ($2.3 trillion) of hidden debt last year, and the figure could climb even further this year, according to a government-linked think tank. Local governments were under pressure to increase infrastructure investment and shore up growth through pandemic, leading to a 6% rise in off-budget borrowing from a recent low of 13.9 billion ...

Bloomberg India’s government is considering resuming fresh bankruptcy filings after the current suspension expires on March 25, people with knowledge of the matter said. The lifting of the halt would come even as a resurgence in virus cases threatens the nascent economic recovery. It could spark a wave of new insolvencies, pent up from last year when businesses were hurt ...

Bloomberg Singapore will relax workplace measures to allow more people to return to offices and permit larger gatherings for various activities, as the city-state gets its virus situation under control. At offices, the government’s stance will shift from working-from-home as a default to a more “flexible and hybrid way of working”, where up to 75% of staff can be at ...