International News

Bloomberg European car sales turned in their weakest performance in the first quarter since an industrywide contraction five years ago, as UK consumers’ apprehension over Brexit continued to erode demand in the region’s second-largest market. First-quarter registrations edged up 0.6 percent, according to figures released by the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, or ACEA. The gain was the slowest since ...

Bloomberg Netflix Inc. used to worry it would alienate customers by raising prices for its streaming service. Not anymore. The company posted its strongest first quarter since going public 16 years ago, despite raising prices for most of its customers over the past several months. Los Gatos, California-based Netflix added 7.41 million users in the period, accord-ing to a statement, ...

Bloomberg The UK economy shows little sign of breaking out of its “pattern of uninspiring growth,” and the first quarter may have been weaker than expected. The first three months of the year may have seen gross domestic product gain as little as 0.2 percent as severe weather cramped growth, a report by the EY Item Club will probably say ...

Bloomberg The acrimonious fight over the future of Xerox Corp looks set to worsen after two of its largest shareholders, activist investor Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason, released a report alleging widespread corporate governance failures in the way the company negotiated its $6.1 billion sale to Fujifilm Holdings Corp. In a letter to Xerox shareholders, Icahn and Deason accused Xerox’s ...

Bloomberg The US and China look to be preparing for a protracted confrontation over trade and investment as they each try to line up allies for their cause. The struggle for support is being waged worldwide, with its locus shifting this week to Washington and the semi-annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Behind the battle: an effort by ...

Bloomberg Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. sweetened its offer for drugmaker Shire Plc to more than $60 billion after three prior bids were rejected, wooing investors in the US company with a higher cash component. The Japanese company boosted its offer to 47 pounds ($65.84) a share from 46.50 pounds a share, confirming a Bloomberg News report that it was considering a ...

Bloomberg Asian technology stocks joined their peers in a global swoon after a disappointing sales outlook from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Apple Inc.’s main chip supplier, rekindled concerns that the smartphone industry’s best days may be behind it. TSMC fell 6 percent — its biggest loss since July 2013 — after predicting current-quarter sales about a billion dollars less than ...

Bloomberg It’s all adding up for Liu Yachao. The chief operating officer of TAL Education Group, a Beijing-based provider of tutoring services for Chinese students in core academic subjects, became the company’s second billionaire as its stock more than doubled in the past year. Chinese parents spend an average of $42,892 on their children’s education, with 93 percent of them ...

Bloomberg Indonesia’s Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti deals with some dangerous men in her role, but they don’t rattle her. She has an equally intimidating weapon on her side: Google. Partnering with the search engine firm, Pudjiastuti is catching illegal fishing activity in real time, after thousands of vessels’ locations were revealed online. In her mission to clean up an industry ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc. set a lobbying record in the first three months, just as an uproar flared up the leak of data on millions of users’ without their permission. The company spent $3.3 million, according to disclosures filed with the government, up from the $3.21 million it spent in the same period a year earlier, which represented the company’s prior ...