International News

Bloomberg A Chinese e-commerce site called Pinduoduo, or PDD, has raised more than $1 billion at a valuation of about $15 billion, roughly 10 times the level just a year ago, according to people familiar with the matter. The Shanghai-based company, founded by ex-Google engineer Colin Huang, is getting the money from existing investors including Sequoia Capital China and Tencent ...

Bloomberg Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed company, can’t own a patent over genetically modified cotton seeds in India, a court ruled. The Delhi High Court verdict said that certain items such as seeds, plants and animals can’t be patented under Indian laws. The court rejected Monsanto’s plea to stop Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd., an estranged licensee of the company, from ...

Bloomberg PT Bukalapak.com became a billion-dollar startup by focussing on the Indonesian farmers and small-time merchants that bigger rivals such as PT Tokopedia neglected. Now it wants to buy its way onto their turf. Bukalapak, which earned unicorn status with funding from 500 Startups among others, has set up a mergers and acquisition team to identify startups that will help ...

London / Reuters European Union regulators urged banks, investors and customers to take “timely action” to avoid disruption to cross-border derivatives and insurance contracts caused by Brexit. Britain leaves the EU in March 2019 and a “standstill” transition deal until the end of 2020 agreed last month won’t be formally ratified until October or later. “Contingency planning should consider timely ...

FRANKFURT / Reuters Springer Nature, the publisher of science magazines Nature and Scientific American, is planning to raise 1.2 billion euros ($1.5 billion) by selling new shares in an initial public offering (IPO), also providing an oppo-rtunity for its private equity owner to cash in. While buyout group BC Partners will sell some of its shares in the listing, German ...

Bloomberg Canada’s export financing agency is giving a vote of confidence to the nation’s economy even in the face of growing trade tensions, raising its projections for sales abroad in its semi-annual forecast report. Export Development Canada predicts the export of goods will grow 6 percent this year, up from a prediction of 4 percent growth six mon- ths ago, ...

London / Reuters Avast, the world’s largest consumer antivirus supplier by customers, said it will apply to list its shares on the London Stock Exchange in what could be a blockbuster float expected to value the company at around $4 billion. The listing, which is anticipated in early May, will see a free float of at least 25 percent of ...

Bloomberg The UK property market is wilting from lack of demand, leaving home prices unchanged for a second month in March. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said its gauge of prices remained at zero, with declines in London and the southeast being offset by gains in the East Midlands, Northern Ireland and Wales. Years of rampant price gains have ...

Bloomberg As recently as January, trading Europe was a pretty straightforward prospect as the euro gained, stocks joined the global rally, and credit spreads ground ever-tighter. What a difference a few months makes. The best year in a decade in terms of euro-area growth has given way to a series of surprisingly weak economic readings across the 19-nation bloc. The ...

Bloomberg Walmart Inc. looks likely to take the next round in the battle for India’s retail market over rival Amazon.com Inc. Flipkart Online Services Pvt, the country’s leading e-commerce company, is leaning towards selling a controlling stake to the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company, rather than Amazon, because of the greater certainty in such a deal, according to people familiar with the ...