International News

Bloomberg A year into his tenure, Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess is entering critical months as he seeks to expand the carmaker’s sprawling Chinese operations while containing tensions at home in Germany. The Chinese market is leading a global shift towards electric vehicles and will take on a bigger role for the German automaker as both a production hub and a ...

Bloomberg Just months after being freed from US sanctions, Russia’s largest aluminum maker plans to invest in a new aluminum rolling mill in Kentucky. United Co Rusal, controlled by billionaire Oleg Deripaska until the US Treasury forced him to reduce his stake earlier this year, intends to invest up to $200 million in the plant being built by closely held ...

Bloomberg Job vacancies in London’s finance industry have halved in two years as uncertainty over Brexit knocks business confidence, a survey by recruiter Morgan McKinley has found. The number of jobs available in the city’s financial services industry and the number of finance professionals seeking new jobs have each fallen by more than half in the past two years, the ...

Bloomberg The European Union has taken a closer look at how Google uses operations in Ireland to help reduce its corporate tax obligations within the trade bloc, two people familiar with the matter said. Officials from the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, held in-depth talks with Irish authorities late last year about whether the Internet-search unit of Alphabet Inc. ...

Bloomberg Trafigura Group Ltd. will take control of Nyrstar NV, Europe’s biggest zinc smelter, as part of a deal to restructure the struggling company’s debt and steer it away from bankruptcy. Under the agreement, Trafigura — Nyrstar’s main shareholder as well as a top supplier, customer and financier — offered a package of its own debt securities to Nyrstar’s creditors ...

Bloomberg Reliance Communications Ltd denied it received favourable treatment by France in settling a tax dispute at a time when it was negotiating to become Dassault Aviation SA’s partner for a contract to sell fighter jets to India. The Indian company, owned by former billionaire Anil Ambani, issued the denial after Le Monde newspaper reported that four years ago France ...

Bloomberg ArcelorMittal’s plan to buy a bankrupt Indian steel company for $6 billion was halted temporarily by the nation’s top court, further delaying tycoon Lakshmi Mittal’s efforts to enter the world’s second-biggest market. The Supreme Court ruled that Essar Steel India Ltd’s current status has to be maintained, pending a review by a bankruptcy tribunal hearing appeals related to the ...

Bloomberg China Three Gorges Corp is planning to scale back its 9.1 billion-euro ($10.3 billion) takeover offer for EDP-Energias de Portugal SA amid concerns about political hurdles and valuation, people familiar with the matter said. The state-owned firm is evaluating smaller alternative transactions that exclude US assets of EDP, which are the most likely to trigger regulatory opposition, the people ...

Bloomberg The US is open to facing “repercussions” if it doesn’t live up to its commitments in a potential trade deal with China, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said, in a sign that the two sides are edging closer to an accord. “There are certain commitments that the United States is making in this agreement, and there are certain commitments that ...

Bloomberg India is witnessing a listless growth in electricity demand, possibly signalling more slowdown in Asia’s third-largest economy. Electricity requirement from distribution utilities in February rose 1.3 percent from a year earlier and barely changed from January’s 1.1 percent, the weakest growth in two years, according to the power ministry’s Central Electricity Authority. Data for power generation, a proxy for ...