International News

Bloomberg India’s first inland voyage by a container ship since it gained independence from Britain 70 years ago ended when the vessel docked in the holy city of Varanasi today, a development officials hope will help shift cargo from the country’s congested road and rail networks. The 1,390 kilometres Ganga watercourse is one of the 111 waterways spanning 20,276 kilometres ...

Bloomberg California utilities are facing the very real possibility that billion-dollar blazes could become an annual occurrence, and they don’t know how to pay for them. Shares of the state’s two largest utilities plummeted after both PG&E Corp. and Edison International released reports suggesting their equipment may have started the deadly fires now burning at both ends of the state. ...

Bloomberg General Electric Co.’s new chief executive officer tried to reassure investors but the effort failed as a deep rout worsened and Wall Street’s confidence in the beleaguered company’s future continued to collapse. The shares tumbled as much as 10 percent as Larry Culp expressed a “sense of urgency” in cutting debt and selling assets. Speaking publicly for the first ...

Bloomberg Vodafone Group Plc shares jumped 7.1 percent after the mobile phone company’s new chief executive unveiled stro-nger than expected results in a fiercely competitive market and kept the dividend stable while he tries to rein in debt. Investors were already bracing for CEO Nick Read to end Vodafone’s policy of constant dividend growth after the $22 billion takeover over ...

Bloomberg UK wage growth accelerated to a near 10-year high, backing the Bank of England’s view that there is now no spare capacity in the labour market. Average earnings excluding bonuses rose 3.2 percent in the three months through September from a year earlier, the most since December 2008, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday. Unemployment unexpectedly rose ...

Bloomberg In a world where iPhone demand is on the wane, Apple Inc. has a Plan B. As customers wait longer between upgrades and the smartphone market saturates, Apple can fall back on charging higher prices for each handset and raking in more money from services such as streaming music, digital videos and data storage. But there’s no back-up for ...

Bloomberg SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son is seeking to raise 2.4 trillion yen ($21.1 billion) in an initial public offering of his Japanese telecom business that could be the country’s largest IPO yet. The Japanese technology giant said in a prospectus it will sell 1.6 billion shares at 1,500 yen apiece in a new entity, SoftBank Corp., that will ...

Bloomberg Bharti Airtel Ltd.’s dollar-denominated bonds due in 2023 surged the most in five years after the company offered to buy back the securities at above the market price amid the risk of a rating downgrade. India’s second-biggest mobile phone carrier will pay $985 per $1,000 principal amount plus accrued interest for any or all of the $1.5 billion of ...

Bloomberg As Jack Ma prepares to step down as chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., he does so after the online sales promotion he has championed for a decade notched another record. In its 10th iteration, the annual Singles’ Day event on November 11 notched 213.5 billion yuan ($30.7 billion) in merchandise sales, an increase of 27 percent, according to ...

Bloomberg Netflix Inc. said it will test a lower-priced version of its film and television streaming service in some markets to boost sales. The company hasn’t committed to lowering prices anywhere, but does want to experiment, Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings said. He didn’t say when or where the test would be conducted. A lower-priced offering would be a departure ...