International News

Bloomberg A key gauge of the UK housing market fell to the weakest since just after the financial crisis. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) said its index of prices fell to the lowest in six years in October, pointing to a modest drop in values. Uncertainty about the UK’s impending exit from the European Union and a lack ...

Bloomberg Global trade tensions, Italy’s fiscal battles and US overheating pose risks to the euro-area economy, the European Commission warned as it lowered its forecast for the coming year. While the list of threats in the commission’s report aren’t a surprise, they come amid mounting signs of a persistent slowdown in the euro area. The European Central Bank has said ...

Bloomberg BMW AG is under pressure to drop its opposition to funding hardware upgrades on some diesel vehicles as German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government continues efforts to defuse a crisis that’s damaging the country’s reputation as an automotive leader. Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer had summoned executives from BMW and rivals Volkswagen AG and Daimler AG to a meeting in Berlin ...

Bloomberg ASML Holding, Europe’s largest semiconductor equipment ma-ker, expects net sales to grow to 13 billion euros ($14.9 billion) by 2020, up from a previous forecast of 11 billion euros. The company already expected sales to reach the 11-billion euro mark for 2018. In a statement kicking off its investor day, ASML’s management said it expects to continue to return ...

Bloomberg SoftBank Group Corp. is seeking to raise a record 2 trillion yen ($18 billion) from Japanese individuals in the initial public offering (IPO) of its mobile phone unit, targeting investors who often get no interest on their savings, said people familiar with the matter. Nomura Holdings Inc., a joint global coordinator, will sell the biggest part of the shares ...

Bloomberg The ability to communicate, shop online, order rides, read books, play games, get food delivery and pay for anything within a single, unified smartphone app is Asia’s defining innovation, technology leaders said at Bloomberg’s New Economy Forum in Singapore. WeChat, Grab and Go-Jek are prime examples of a breed of software called the Super App. In the US and ...

Bloomberg A Chinese government official has sounded the most direct warning yet about the nation’s slumping car industry. China’s vehicle sales will come in under 30 million units this year and may even fall below the number in 2017, Wu Wei, a divisional director under China’s top economic planning body, said on Wednesday. Companies shouldn’t expand production capacity blindly, and ...

Bloomberg A network of private railroads more than three times the length of the New York subway system is the key lifeline for Australia’s A$61.3 billion ($44.5 billion) iron ore export industry. So when there’s a derailment in the biggest shipper — global markets, as well as the ground, shudder. A runaway train that derailed this week after traveling 92 ...

Bloomberg Even before ballots are counted from the elections, some clear winners have emerged, as Google and Facebook Inc. reap windfalls from political advertising after a season of controversy over online political speech. Political ad spending is on course to set a record, exceeding expenditures in the 2016 presidential election year, with a total of perhaps $9 billion. Political ad ...

Bloomberg Dell Technologies Inc. has reached out to investors to determine what it would take to win their support for its plans to return to the public markets, a person familiar with the matter said. Shareholders, including activist investor Carl Icahn, have balked at the terms of Dell’s proposed deal to take the technology giant public through a $21.7 billion ...