International News

Bloomberg Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani doubled down on his promise to offer 5G services on his wireless network as early as this year, as his conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd reported a record profit aided by its consumer businesses. The group’s wireless operator, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd — India’s largest — has started advance tests to prepare the fifth-generation, high-speed network, ...

Bloomberg UltraTech Cement Ltd doubled profit in the three months ended on December 31 on sustained demand for housing, the company said in a statement. Net income jumped to 15.8 billion rupees ($217 million) from 7 billion rupees a year earlier, beating analyst estimates, the unit of billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla’s Aditya Birla Group said in an exchange filing. “While ...

Bloomberg Indonesia sees downside risks for economic growth in the first quarter as the government imposed more restrictions to curb a worsening coronavirus outbreak, said the finance minister. The first quarter is “very tough,” Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “We hope in February and March we can still catch up despite the January ...

Bloomberg President Joe Biden is discovering the limits of his power to boost world’s largest economy on his own, as congressional opposition to his sweeping stimulus plan hardened soon after he was inaugurated. While publicly urging Congress to swiftly pass his $1.9 trillion proposal — warning of rising unemployment, hunger and homelessness if lawmakers don’t act — Biden issued more ...

Bloomberg Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to do “whatever it takes” to help UK workers through the pandemic, in a further sign the government will extend its job support plan. Asked whether the furlough program would be extended past April if the UK remained under lockdown, Johnson said the government would “support livelihoods” as it had done through the crisis. ...

Bloomberg US credit card delinquencies reached record-low levels in 2020, as Americans took advantage of stimulus checks and adjusted their spending habits, according to a new report. Delinquencies on bank-issued cards stood at 1.53% in the third quarter of 2020, virtually unchanged from the previous quarter, after rising to 2.62% at the onset of the pandemic as millions of Americans ...

Bloomberg Germany cut its prediction for economic growth as the extension of coronavirus lockdowns hits activity at the start of the year. The government now expects a 3% expansion in 2021, down from 4.4% forecast at the end of October, according to a person familiar with its annual economic report to be published next week. Economy Minister Peter Altmaier is ...

Bloomberg France is set to go back into lockdown “within days” amid concerns over a new wave of contaminations driven by the UK variant of the coronavirus, Journal du Dimanche (JDD) said, citing unidentified people with knowledge of the matter. A decision is imminent, JDD wrote, saying French President Emmanuel Macron could announce lockdown — the country’s third — on Wednesday ...

Bloomberg Brexit drove the second-biggest jump in UK delivery times in at least 30 years this month, adding to Britain’s economic woes as Covid shut down services. IHS Markit said that UK output falls at the quickest rate since May, hurt by additional red tape from leaving the European Union single market and a severe lockdown at home. That followed ...

Bloomberg The UK is still in the grip of the coronavirus crisis, but political speculation is already rife on how the country will manage the ballooning debt it has run up to fight the pandemic. With the nation still fresh from almost a decade of austerity, there’s little appetite for spending cuts to shrink a deficit on course to reach ...