International News

Bloomberg Australia’s jobless rate fell to the lowest in more than six years in September as fewer people sought work, suggesting the drop is unlikely to alter the Reserve Bank’s policy outlook. While unemployment fell from 5.3 percent to 5 percent — the level estimated by the central bank to signal full employment — the workforce participation rate declined to ...

Bloomberg Japan’s exports unexpectedly fell in September — the first drop in almost two years — as natural disasters disrupted economic activity, while higher energy prices continued to feed gains in imports. While one-off events make it difficult to assess the impact of the US-China trade dispute, Japanese export growth has been slowing this year following double-digit expansion in 2017. ...

Bloomberg Google will start charging smartphone makers that want to install its app store and services for devices sold in Europe, changes it says it must make to comply with a European Union antitrust order in July that brought a record 4.3 billion euro ($5 billion) fine. Starting from October 29, new phone models that install the Play store and ...

Bloomberg The Czech Republic must distribute its growing wealth more widely, and even a cooler economy won’t stop higher social expenditure and investment, according to the country’s finance chief. The richest former Soviet satellite is relaxing traditional spending controls that have underpinned one of Europe’s sturdiest budgets. Just five years after austerity exacerbated a record-long recession, Alena Schillerova — the ...

Bloomberg CVS Health Corp. and Aetna Inc received conditional approval to proceed with their proposed $68 billion merger, one of the largest in a series of recent deals that stand to transform the US health-care business. The combination would create a giant with a hand in insurance, prescription-drug benefits and drugstores across the US. By bringing those businesses under one ...

Bloomberg Swisscom AG is considering options for its Fastweb SpA unit, including a sale or partnership, that would increase the Italian business’s market share in mobile services, people familiar with the matter said. The company has discussed a tie-up with CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd.’s local wireless unit, Wind Tre SpA, though the Hong Kong conglomerate isn’t interested in adding landline ...

Bloomberg International Business Machines Corp. is pressing deeper into its strategy of making cloud services more compatible with competitors, rather than trying to force customers into its own walled garden. IBM unveiled three new products to manage security, artificial intelligence and storage services across multiple cloud systems, regardless of whose they are. Having arrived late to the cloud revolution, IBM ...

Bloomberg Three commodities traders were charged by the US Justice Department with orchestrating a $60 million fraud that involved spoofing and conspiring to manipulate futures contracts, according to prosecutors and court filings in Houston. Yuchun “Bruce” Mao, a 39-year-old Chinese national, is accused of working with two other traders at his firm in a scheme to rig the purchase and ...

Bloomberg A Chinese push to conclude a new Asia-wide trade agreement this year is running into opposition from India fed partly by concerns over the fallout of Beijing’s deepening trade war with the US. The 16-country Regional Comprehensive Economic Agreement (RCEP) is the Beijing-backed rival to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a vast regional pact once led by the US that ...

Bloomberg Lenders for Essar Steel India Ltd., the biggest steel mill on the block under India’s new bankruptcy law, have selected ArcelorMittal as the preferred bidder for the asset, bringing the world’s largest steel maker a step closer to gaining a foothold in India’s growing market for the alloy. Arcelor, controlled by billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, will now begin final negotiations ...