International News

  Bloomberg UK employers unleashed a hiring spree at the start of 2023 even as consumer confidence about the economy stalled, two separate surveys showed. There were more than 184,000 new job advertisements in the first week of January, up by a quarter on the same period a year ago, according to the Recruitment & Employment Confederation. The market research ...

  Bloomberg BE Group, an investment firm fronted by former bankers, has made a fresh attempt at a takeover of Belgium’s biggest insurer Ageas, people familiar with the matter said. The consortium recently approached Ageas and has been trying to secure financing for a potential deal, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. Shares in Ageas ...

  Bloomberg Google parent Alphabet Inc. said it will cut about 12,000 jobs, more than 6% of its global workforce, becoming the latest tech giant to retrench after years of abundant growth and hiring. The cuts will affect jobs globally and across the entire company, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai told employees in an email on Friday, writing that he ...

Bloomberg Close to half a million workers are ready to strike on a single day as Britain faces an escalation of industrial action across a number of sectors. Unions representing civil servants, teachers, university staff and train drivers have said their members will walk out on Feb. 1 as part of demands for higher pay to cope with the worst ...

  Bloomberg President Joe Biden’s plan to subsidize clean energy is “dangerous” and risks pushing the world toward protectionism, Britain’s Business Secretary Grant Shapps said, in the UK’s bluntest criticism to date of the US Inflation Reduction Act. European Union leaders say the US legislation will unfairly benefit American firms and violate World Trade Organization rules. To date, Prime Minister ...

  Bloomberg US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, declaring that African can help shape the future of the global economy, will set out why the Biden administration intends to elevate its focus on the continent over the next two years in a speech she’s slated to deliver Friday in Dakar, Senegal. “The United States is committed to building on Africa’s significant ...

  Bloomberg Prices for Swiss single family homes fell for the first time since before the pandemic, raising the prospect that a market that has boomed for decades may be turning. Transaction prices declined 0.18% in the final three months of 2022, data compiled by Zurich-based real-estate consulting firm Wuest Partner show. The last time they fell was in the ...

  Bloomberg Australian employment unexpectedly fell last month while the jobless rate remained unchanged, sending the currency and bond yields lower as traders pared bets on a February interest-rate increase. Employers cut 14,600 roles in December — the first decline in five months — confounding expectations for a 25,000 increase, official data showed Thursday. Unemployment held at 3.5% after being ...

  Bloomberg The writing was on the wall when Britain finalized its break from the European Union: The UK sorely lacked the battery manufacturing capability that would be absolutely critical to the auto industry’s future, leaving the country’s already declining car sector in a make-or-break bind. The failure of Britishvolt Ltd. to get past the stage of developing prototypes for ...

  Bloomberg Public borrowings in the US and elsewhere have swelled because of overspending partly fueled by fractured politics, said former International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Raghuram Rajan. “The size of the debt has gone up tremendously,” he told a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Part of the problem that’s going on is clearly there is a ...