News

Bloomberg Singapore’s finance minister said next month’s budget will focus on infrastructure spending, healthcare for an aging population, and helping businesses transition to a digital economy. “We want to be able to continue to invest in education, the healthcare of our people, and in taking care of the growing number of seniors,” Heng Swee Keat said in an interview with ...

Bloomberg Facebook Inc’s repeated privacy scandals have infuriated users, lawmakers and data-security advocates who are clamouring for a forceful government response. That job mainly falls to Joe Simons, who is under pressure to satisfy doubters or risk sidelining his agency as the nation’s chief privacy watchdog. The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission talked tough when he took over the ...

Bloomberg Lawmakers in Europe are set to test how important Google thinks its news-aggregation service really is. The European Union is working towards finalising a controversial new copyright law. The rules give publishers rights to demand money from the Alphabet Inc unit, Facebook Inc and other web platforms, when small fragments of their articles show up in news search results, ...

Bloomberg TomTom NV will sell its Telematics fleet-management business to tire manufacturer Bridgestone Corp for 910 million euros ($1 billion), freeing up resources to battle the likes of Alphabet Inc. for access to mapping technology in car dashboards. The sale is a big step in TomTom’s shift to location technology as customers ditch the personal navigation devices that made the ...

Bloomberg Royal Philips NV said it will shutter a baby products factory in the UK, after concerns over the nation’s exit from the European Union intensified this week. The Dutch health-tech company will move much of its Glemsford, Suffolk-based production plant to Drachten in the Netherlands, as part of its efforts to cut plants from roughly 50 to about 30 ...

Bloomberg Britons are enjoying the strongest wage growth since the financial crisis a decade ago as the labour market tightens. Average earnings excluding bonuses continued to increase an annual 3.3 percent in the three months through November and unemployment fell to 4 percent, matching the lowest rate since 1975, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday. Separate figures showed ...

Bloomberg Brazil’s largest coffee roaster is on the prowl for acquisitions in less-consolidated South American markets. The Tres Coracoes venture is looking to buy coffee-roasting companies in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, its president, Pedro Lima, said in an interview in Sao Paulo. In Brazil, Tres Coracoes accounts for 27 percent of the roasted-coffee market, ahead of Dutch giant ...

ABU DHABI / WAM His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, on Monday received the participants of the 27th conference of the General Union of Arab Writers in Abu Dhabi, being hosted in the UAE capital from January 19 to 22, with the participation of ...

Bloomberg The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its forecast for the world economy, predicting it will grow at the weakest pace in three years in 2019 and warning fresh trade tensions would spell further trouble. In its second downgrade in three months, the lender blamed softening demand across Europe and recent palpitations in financial markets. It predicts global growth of ...

DUBAI / WAM The UAE is ranked 1st regionally and 19th globally in the 2019 Global Talent Competitiveness Index report, published by Paris-based grad- uate business school Insead. For the fourth straight time, the UAE came ahead of Mena countries in the report — a comprehensive annual index that measures how countries and cities grow, attract and retain talent, providing ...