International News

Bloomberg Novartis AG, the Swiss drugmaker, raised its earnings outlook for the second time this year, buoyed by key heart and psoriasis medicines. Earnings excluding some items are expected to increase by a low double-digit to mid-teens percentage, the Basel, Switzerland-based company said. Novartis previously forecast a high single-digit percentage increase. The outlook for sales, new medicines and the Sandoz ...

Bloomberg YouTube reached a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) resolving allegations that the company violated rules about collecting data on and advertising to children, according to a person familiar with the matter. The FTC’s five-member commission voted to approve the settlement, said the person, who declined to be identified because the matter is confidential. Details of the ...

Bloomberg UK law firm Mishcon de Reya is preparing for an initial public offering or a stake sale, Sky News reported, citing people it didn’t identify. The London-based firm, which wants to raise capital to accelerate its expansion, is expected to hire bankers to work on a deal in coming months, Sky said. The company hasn’t made any decisions yet, ...

Bloomberg Google agreed to pay $11 million to end a lawsuit accusing the internet giant of discriminating against older job applicants, a deal that amounts to an average payout of more than $35,000 for 227 people who joined the class action. The settlement also calls for the Alphabet Inc unit to train employees and managers about age bias, to create ...

Bloomberg Billionaire Azim Premji has helped create India’s latest tech unicorn: a fast-rising software startup that symbolises the growing investor interest in the Asian nation’s enterprise technology space. Icertis, which competes with SAP SE and Oracle Corp to help businesses manage contracts in the cloud, has raised $115 million, propelling it to unicorn status as investors flock to enterprise software ...

Bloomberg As rice prices plunge, farmers in the Philippines are asking President Rodrigo Duterte to review a 5-month-old law that paved the way for unlimited imports of the staple grain, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Pinol said. Rice prices at the farm gate dropped to 12-14 pesos ($0.24-$0.27) a kilo from 20 pesos earlier this year, Pinol said on his Facebook account. ...

Bloomberg Singapore’s exports plummeted in June amid a worsening trade war, spelling more bad news for the city state’s economy. Non-oil domestic exports contracted 17.3 percent from a year ago after falling a revised 16.3 percent in May, Enterprise Singapore said. That was worse than the median estimate of a 9.6 percent decline in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The ...

Bloomberg Visa Inc has become the latest investor in ride-hailing giant Go-Jek as the two companies push digital payments across Southeast Asia. The world’s biggest payments network has invested an undisclosed amount in Go-Jek as part of the Indonesian company’s ongoing series F fundraising round, the two companies said. The move follows Go-Jek’s announcement this month it had secured funding ...

Bloomberg The family that controls Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd, India’s largest private hospital chain, is looking to sell assets or bring an outside investor into their holding company to pay down debt. The aim is to reduce the Apollo shares pledged by the family as collateral to lenders, to 20 percent of their total holding in the company from about ...

Bloomberg India may spin off units of Coal India Ltd, the world’s largest coal miner, into separate listed companies to boost competition and raise government funds, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The state-run company and the coal ministry are studying a proposal by the finance ministry’s Department of Investment & Public Asset Management to list four of ...