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Bloomberg Viva Republica Ltd, operator of South Korea’s largest fintech startup Toss, is planning to raise about $200 million from investors to bankroll its expansion in online banking and security trading services. The company just embarked on its funding round and hopes to complete it in coming months, founder Lee Seung-gun said in an interview, declining to disclose the expected ...

Bloomberg The Philippine economy contracted in the first three months of 2020 as restrictions to stem the coronavirus outbreak shut most businesses and sapped consumption, a trend seen worsening in the current quarter. Gross domestic product fell 0.2% in the first quarter compared to a year ago, using 2018 as the new base year, the Philippine Statistics Authority said. That ...

Bloomberg China’s exports unexpectedly rose in April aided by stronger shipments to South East Asia, though with the coronavirus pandemic damaging global demand that increase is likely to be temporary. Imports fell. Exports rose 3.5% in dollar terms in April from a year earlier, while imports dropped 14.2%, the customs administration said on Thursday. Economists had forecast that exports would ...

Bloomberg Prudential Financial Inc. expects coronavirus deaths to cut earnings by about $200 million this year after it swung to a net loss in the first quarter. The life insurer’s earnings will be hardest hit in the second quarter, by an estimated $135 million, company executives told analysts on a conference call. That assumes 100,000 fatalities in the US and ...

Bloomberg Telefonica SA and Liberty Global Plc have agreed to create the UK’s largest phone and internet operator, threatening their rivals and marking another industry-defining deal for billionaire John Malone. The deal values the new company at 31 billion pounds ($38 billion), with Telefonica’s O2 being valued at 12.7 billion pounds and Liberty’s Virgin Media valued at around 18.7 billion ...

Bloomberg Industrial production in the euro area’s two largest economies cratered in March, highlighting the crippling impact of just half a month of factory closures to control the spread of the deadly coronavirus. A 9.2% decline in output in Germany and a 16.2% drop in France are the latest signs of the severity of Europe’s slump. The warning from industry ...

Bloomberg Nintendo Co. beat its own forecast for sales of the Switch console in the last fiscal year, reflecting surging demand for games and other entertainment as people spend more time at home amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Nintendo sold 21 million units of the Switch in the year ended in March, ahead of its estimate of 19.5 million. The Kyoto-based ...

Bloomberg AT&T Inc.’s obsession with paying down debt has led to some financial creativity. Right before the end of 2019, AT&T took a collection of cell-tower rent payments that it will receive in the future, rolled them into a subsidiary, then sold shares of the unit to investors for $6 billion. The new entity is called AT&T Investment & Tower ...

ABU DHABI / WAM The UAE’s Federal National Council (FNC) is setting the standard in the parliamentary sector, embracing advanced videoconferencing technology to hold all of its sessions uninterrupted during the current crisis, said Dr Abdul Rahman bin Mohammad bin Nasser Al Owais, Minister of State for Federal National Council Affairs. Al Owais said – as the council held the ...

DUBAI / WAM Dubai’s economy remains resilient to global economic headwinds caused by the negative impact of the Covid-19 outbreak. The city’s external trade in the first quarter of 2020 reached AED323 billion. Exports grew 2 percent to AED43 billion compared to the corresponding quarter last year. Imports accounted for AED189 billion while re-exports touched AED92 billion. The volume of ...