International News

  Bloomberg London residents are weathering the cost-of-living crunch better than people in the rest of the UK, one research group concluded. Residents of the capital saw their real wages adjusted for inflation slip by £9 ($11.13) a week compared to a year ago during the fourth quarter of 2022, research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research indicates. ...

  Bloomberg The Bank of England is likely to keep interest rates in painful territory through this year or longer even as the economy falls into recession. Inflation is running five times above the BOE’s target, and Governor Andrew Bailey is concerned that worker shortages are feeding wage pressures. The market is betting on another 1 point increase in the ...

  Bloomberg Alphabet Inc.’s Google has cut most of the jobs at Area 120, its in-house incubator for new projects, as part of a broad wave of layoffs across the company. Three projects in the incubator will “graduate” later this year, meaning they will be folded into Google, a company spokesperson said Friday. “We have made the difficult decision to ...

  Bloomberg EG Group is exploring a merger of its petrol forecourts with Asda Group Ltd. to create a business valued at more than £10 billion ($12 billion), according to the The Times. The Issa brothers and London-based TDR Capital are considering the combination with the supermarket chain to help refinance £7 billion of debt due in 2025, the paper ...

  Bloomberg The US and other industrialized countries may be able to bring inflation down without triggering the huge jumps in unemployment that economists may have predicted prior to the pandemic, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. If correct, that might improve the chances for a soft landing of the US economy as the Fed ...

Bloomberg UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will look to begin closing a series of pay deals with trade unions, as the government enters 10 days of crunch talks ahead of coordinated strike action planned for early February. Members of the Cabinet have told Sunak he must act fast to avoid a week of strikes that threaten to bring the country ...

  Bloomberg Auto supplier ZF Friedrichhafen AG and Wolfspeed Inc. plan to build a $3 billion wafer factory in Germany’s Saarland to make chips for electric vehicles and other applications, a boon for a region dependent on combustion-engine components, said people familiar with the matter. The go-ahead for the project is subject to commitments on subsidies amounting to a quarter ...

Bloomberg The Netherlands and Japan, home to key suppliers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, are close to joining a Biden administration-led effort to restrict exports of the technology to China and hobble its push into the chips industry. The Dutch and Japanese export controls may be agreed to and finalized as soon as the end of January, according to people familiar ...

  Bloomberg The number of people searching for lodgers to stay in their spare rooms has spiked, as living costs in Britain remain stubbornly high. Homeowners advertising empty bedrooms for rent on the website SpareRoom spiked in January, hitting the highest levels since the summer of 2020 when pent-up demand was unleashed by loosening Covid restrictions. The company said that ...

  Bloomberg Holcim Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Jan Jenisch said he’s looking to continue an acquisition drive at the Swiss building material maker as he pivots away from traditional cement. Jenisch said in an interview this week that Holcim has “the strongest balance sheet ever, which opens up many opportunities for continued acquisitions and investments.” The CEO said the company ...