International News

Bloomberg The venture capital arms of Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Salesforce.com Inc. are investing in UK payments startup GoCardless, which has raised an additional $75 million to fund expansion. The financing is being led by Adams Street Partners, GV, formerly known as Google Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures, GoCardless said in a statement. Existing investors Accel Partners, Balderton Capital, Notion Capital ...

Bloomberg Singapore Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat will aim to strike a delicate balance in Monday’s budget: preaching fiscal prudence while doling out more social spending ahead of elections that could come as early as this year. While not expected to be as headline-grabbing as last year — when Heng flagged a hike in the goods-and-services tax — the 2019 ...

Bloomberg India raised duties on all goods imported from Pakistan following the withdrawal of most-favored nation status to its neighbor after a terror attack last week killed dozens of Indian soldiers. The basic customs duty on all Pakistan exports to India will be increased to 200 percent immediately, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in a post on Twitter. Withdrawing the ...

Bloomberg The trade war between the US and China and slowing retail sales dragged Hong Kong’s economic growth down at the end of last year, with exports showing almost “zero growth.” Gross domestic product in the fourth quarter was “less than 1.5 percent,” according to a blog post on Sunday from Financial Secretary Paul Chan. The “significant slowdown” was well ...

Bloomberg Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law key economic measures that are seen to help lower rice prices, strengthen the central bank and bolster state revenues. Duterte signed a bill that would remove caps on rice imports and boost supply of the staple grain, according to Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea. The measure is expected to help cool inflation, which ...

Bloomberg India Inc. is extending a banner year for share buybacks. Seven weeks into 2019, two dozen companies led by technology major Infosys Ltd. have announced or completed plans to buy 170.5 billion rupees ($2.4 billion) of their own stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. This compares with about 545 billion rupees for all of 2018, which was the ...

Bloomberg Canada is asking US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to help press the Trump administration to lift tariffs on its steel and aluminum exports. Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland has said she met Pelosi and other Democrats on the sidelines of a global security conference in Munich. They discussed President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imports, Canada’s ...

Bloomberg After becoming the hot new crop in parts of Canada’s prairies, soybeans are starting to lose their appeal as Donald Trump’s trade war with China drives down prices. Soybean acres in Canada are poised to drop for the second straight year as farmers shift acres to more profitable crops. In addition to the price concerns, some growers are also ...

Bloomberg The global tech war over Huawei Technologies Co. saw the European Union come under pressure from both the US and China as they fought over whether the company’s equipment should be banned from future 5G networks. “Chinese law requires them to provide Beijing’s vast security apparatus with access to any data that touches their networks or equipment,” US Vice ...

Bloomberg Porsche’s UK unit told customers they might have to pay as much as 10 percent more than expected if the country makes a hard Brexit and their imported car arrives after March 29. The information is precautionary and will allow customers to plan ahead for if the UK leaves the European Union at that date, Porsche said in an ...