International News

  Bloomberg Turmoil at trophy properties in London and Frankfurt offer a glimpse of the damage awaiting European real estate investors as they face the sharpest reversal on record. From a fraught refinancing process for an office building in the City of London to the strained sale of the Commerzbank Tower in Germany’s financial hub, investors are scrambling to find ...

  Bloomberg A new survey of business economists suggests US job market conditions are beginning to soften, with firms indicating an easing of labor shortages and a pullback in hiring expectations. A National Association for Business Economics survey showed about a third of respondents say their firms are not facing any labor shortages, and nearly 20% expect employment at their ...

  Bloomberg Germany’s antitrust regulator opened an investigation into PayPal Holdings Inc. over potential obstruction of competitors and restriction of price competition The Federal Cartel Office is looking at PayPal’s user terms that block business from offering products at lower prices if their customers chose other payment services. The regulator will also look at how the company bans sellers from ...

Bloomberg Ambulance workers walked out Monday in the biggest show of industrial action by first responders since trade unions kicked off an historic series of protests against pay levels in Britain’s National Health Service. Workers from Unison, Unite and the GMB labor groups are on strike again with the public advised to only call 999 if there’s a life-threatening situation. ...

  Bloomberg France and Germany announced a plan to strengthen their rail links as a way to offer greener travel between the two countries. The nations “support the deployment of the high-speed train route between Paris and Berlin, as well as the night train service, both announced for 2024,” according to a joint declaration released after a meeting in Paris ...

  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 ...