International News

Bloomberg SAP SE, Europe’s biggest tech company by market value, is exploring the sale of a unit that helps telecommunications operators route calls and text messages, people with knowledge of the matter said. The German firm is working with an adviser to gauge interest in the business and has been speaking to potential buyers, said the people, who asked not ...

Bloomberg New Zealand’s government is preparing additional fiscal measures to limit a surge in unemployment as it battles the coronavirus, Finance Minister Grant Robertson said. “Work on further significant government investment to protect jobs, support cashflow, and prepare the economy for recovery is well advanced,” Robertson said in Wellington. Scenarios released by the Treasury department show that unemployment “can be ...

Bloomberg Southeast Asian nations plan to discuss forming a joint fund to combat the coronavirus pandemic with China, Japan and South Korea during a virtual summit on Tuesday, according to a Thai official. The 13-nation special summit initiated by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations comes as the region struggles to contain the Covid-19 outbreak even after it spread to ...

Bloomberg Apple Inc’s iPhone shipments in China rebounded in March as the world’s second-largest economy worked to reboot its manufacturing industry following the disruption caused by the novel coronavirus outbreak. Shipments of Apple’s marquee device jumped 19% in March from a year earlier to 2.5 million units, according to Bloomberg calculations based on monthly data from the China Academy of ...

Bloomberg The coronavirus outbreak will reduce Japanese automakers’ combined operating profit by 38% this fiscal year, but the manufacturers may rebound faster than they did after the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc said. Demand could “recover relatively quickly” once the pandemic nears an end, Kota Yuzawa and other analysts wrote in ...

Bloomberg China has started the process of potentially merging its two biggest brokerage firms to create a company that can better compete with the global investment banks as the country opens up its financial markets, according to people familiar with the matter. Citic Securities Co and CSC Financial Co, along with their government shareholders Citic Group and Central Huijin Investment ...

Bloomberg The Philippines is allowing health workers with existing overseas contracts to leave, relaxing an order earlier this month to keep them in the country to reinforce the healthcare system amid the pandemic. Future applications for healthcare jobs abroad are “frozen until further notice,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin, who called the ban unconstitutional, said. President Rodrigo Duterte said that ...

Bloomberg Russia’s deepening economic crisis is on the verge of spilling into some of the most remittance-dependent economies in the world. Migrant workers from the former-Soviet Union send $13 billion home each year from Russia, where they are allowed to work visa-free. But now that money is starting to dry up due to lockdowns in Moscow and St. Petersburg that ...

Bloomberg Europe is heading for a double-digit slump in first half of 2020 amid widespread lockdowns to stem the spread of the coronavirus, according to economists. Bloomberg’s monthly survey puts the contraction in the euro area at more than 10% in the January-June period, with most of the hit — 8.3% — in the second quarter. Even with an expected ...

Bloomberg The US federal budget deficit is on track to exceed $3.8 trillion this year even if Congress doesn’t enact any more stimulus spending, and the nation’s debt will rise to levels not seen since the country emerged from World War II, a non-partisan budget watchdog estimated. The projection by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget would put the ...