International News

Bloomberg Shares of German shipping line Hapag-Lloyd AG plunged as much as 22 percent after the company cut its profit forecast for the year, as overcapacity in the industry combined with rising fuel costs to put a squeeze on profit. Danish rival A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S also fell on Hapag-Lloyd’s surprise profit warning. Container-shipping capacity has been growing faster than trade ...

Bloomberg The UK construction industry fared far better than previously thought during a snow-blighted first quarter, giving an unexpected boost to the economy. Building output fell 0.8 percent from the fourth quarter instead of the 2.7 percent drop estimated last month, the Office for National Statistics said. Overall economic growth was revised to 0.2 percent from 0.1 percent. Separate figures ...

Bloomberg German unemployment fell for the 12th consecutive month in June, suggesting that companies in Europe’s largest economy are relatively optimistic that the current slowdown won’t worsen. The number of people out of work declined by a seasonally adjusted 15,000 to 2.342 million, the Federal Labor Agency in Nuremberg said. Economists in a Bloomberg survey had predicted a drop of ...

Bloomberg In imposing sweeping tariffs, President Donald Trump is betting he can give domestic companies a boost while beating back foreign competitors. The problem is figuring out which one is which. About 40 percent of the cars and trucks that General Motors Co. sells in the US this year, for example, will be imported, according to researcher LMC Automotive. The ...

Bloomberg Mazda Motor Corp. became the latest auto company to condemn the Trump administration’s plans for potential car import tariffs, saying such duties would hit both the industry as well as US consumers. The Japanese manufacturer said it filed comments on the Commerce Department’s investigation into car-related imports, urging it to “reject the premise that auto imports are a threat ...

Bloomberg HNA Group Co., the Chinese conglomerate selling assets to pay down debt, is exploring a sale of Radisson Hotel Group, according to people familiar with the matter. HNA has been gauging interest from rival hotel chains and other potential buyers of the Minneapolis-based company, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. There ...

Bloomberg ZTE Corp. has appointed a new chairman from a state research outfit that backed its founding decades ago, taking another step toward cleaning house and freeing itself from a ban on American technology purchases. Shareholders voted in Li Zixue, the 54-year-old deputy director of the Xi’an Microelectronics Technology Institute, as chairman, according to a Shenzhen stock exchange filing. The ...

Bloomberg China’s official factory gauge fell more than expected in June, just as the world’s two biggest economies head toward a trade war. The manufacturing purchasing managers index stood at 51.5 in June, versus 51.9 in May, and the forecast of 51.6 in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The non-manufacturing PMI, covering services and construction, rose to 55, the statistics ...

Bloomberg Less than halfway through his first year as chief executive officer of Novartis AG, Vas Narasimhan plans a third major transaction to narrow its focus on developing cutting-edge medicines. The Swiss drugmaker said that it will spin off its Alcon eye-care unit while using proceeds from the $13 billion sale of its stake in a consumer-health joint venture with ...

Bloomberg European Union leaders vowed an unwavering response to President Donald Trump’s protectionism, signalling a readiness to retaliate should the US escalate a trade war with tariffs on cars. The EU government heads repeated criticism of US duties on foreign metals and expressed support for the bloc’s retaliatory action over those levies, which Trump has justified on national-security grounds. The ...