News

Bloomberg Brexit is driving companies out of the UK, and the Netherlands is raking in the corporate refugees. About 250 companies are in talks with the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency to potentially relocate activities to the country, according to a statement. The candidates would join 42 companies that made the move last year, and the 18 early birds in 2017. ...

Bloomberg The European Commission slashed its growth forecasts for all the euro region’s major economies from Germany to Italy and warned that Brexit and the slowdown in China threaten to make the outlook even worse. The European Union’s executive arm delivered a downbeat report that shaved a whole percentage point off its 2019 projection for Italy, now seen with minimal ...

Bloomberg German online payments firm Wirecard AG has seen its stock plunge by more than a third in recent days on reports of accounting misdeeds at its Singapore unit. Now, the company is fighting back by questioning the foundations of the allegations. A preliminary review last May by a respected Singapore law firm lists allegations of potential financial irregularities, money ...

Bloomberg Publicis Groupe SA is setting off alarm bells on Madison Avenue as the ad industry’s earnings season gets under way. The French owner of Saatchi & Saatchi and Leo Burnett Worldwide suffered a surprise drop in fourth-quarter sales, blaming cuts in ad spending by consumer brands in the US. So-called organic revenue fell 0.3 percent in the quarter, missing ...

Bloomberg Call it the Masayoshi Son mathematical distortion field. The founder of SoftBank Group Corp. added about 1.94 trillion yen ($17.6 billion) to the market value of his company— by unveiling a plan to buy back shares worth less than a third of that amount. Based on his own stake, Son’s net worth rose by about $5 billion. His fortune ...

Bloomberg The Philippine Congress approved the 3.76 trillion-peso ($72 billion) budget for 2019, ending an impasse that put on hold funding for new government projects. Lawmakers ratified the spending plan in Manila, just before a three-month recess until May 20. The Philippines missed the year-end deadline to approve the 2019 budget — the first time in almost a decade — ...

Bloomberg Lenders dumped shares of Anil Ambani group companies they held as collateral after their market value plummeted about 126 billion rupees ($1.8 billion) this month, adding to the litany of woes plaguing the Indian billionaire. Creditors sold a total 5.5 billion shares in four companies — Reliance Power Ltd., Reliance Infrastructure Ltd., Reliance Communications Ltd. and Reliance Capital Ltd. ...

Bloomberg Sony Corp. is buying back as much as 100 billion yen ($910 million) of its own shares, the electronics maker’s first-ever large scale repurchase. The shares rose as much as 4.8 percent in early trading in Tokyo after announcing the buyback, which will start on Tuesday and last through March 22. This is the first share repurchase aimed at ...

Bloomberg The China slowdown sending tremors through the business world has resulted in the biggest record loss in India’s corporate history. Tata Motors Ltd. shares had their biggest drop in 26 years in Mumbai trading after the company unveiled a writedown in its luxury Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc unit. The decline of as much as 30 percent was the ...

Bloomberg India’s biggest foreign-owned money manager expects the nation’s economic growth and company earnings to be insulated from national elections even as stock market volatility increases in the run-up to voting. “Elections can only boost or dampen sentiment depending on the news flow, but they won’t massively impact the underlying earnings and economic growth of India,” said Anand Radhakrishnan, chief ...