News

Bloomberg The International Energy Agency cut forecasts for global oil demand growth in 2018 as the highest prices in three years put a brake on consumption. “The recent jump in oil prices will take its toll,” said the Paris-based agency, which advises most major economies on energy policy. Crude has climbed 17 percent this year, trading near $78 a barrel ...

Bloomberg Green investing in the UK fell 56 percent last year, sparking concerns in Parliament that the nation will not maintain its lead in clean energy or meet climate targets after leaving the European Union. “Billions of pounds of investment is needed in clean energy, transport, heating and industry to meet our carbon targets,” said Mary Creagh, a member of ...

Bloomberg More than a quarter of US nuclear power plants don’t make enough money to cover their operating costs, raising the threat of more early retirements. Of the 66 nuclear power plants operating in the US, 24 are either scheduled to close or probably won’t make money through 2021, according Nicholas Steckler, an analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance. These ...

Bloomberg European officials aren’t letting a first-quarter slowdown undermine their confidence in the economy, but an upcoming round of numbers may test their view that the winter blues will pass. Descriptions by various European Central Bank policy makers have ranged from solid to robust and strong when asked about the recent performance. Even after Germany, the euro area’s economic engine, ...

Bloomberg BT Group Plc, still reeling from an outlook for falling profits delivered last week, is counting on a slew of new consumer offerings to lift investor sentiment. The UK’s former phone monopoly is pulling the trigger on its unique ability to offer packages of mobile and landline services, two years after the 12.5 billion-pound ($16.9 billion) acquisition of mobile ...

Bloomberg The lumber market is red-hot, with futures rising to another record thanks to a confluence of import tariffs, transport bottlenecks and strong housing demand. The futures rose 1 percent to close at $619 per 1,000 board feet on the Chicago Board of Trade. They’ve surged 66 percent in the past 12 months, a bigger gain than any of the ...

Bloomberg Novartis AG’s top lawyer became the first executive to take the fall for the controversial $1.2 million in payments he helped arrange to Donald Trump’s attorney, as the drugmaker tries to contain the furor from last week’s revelation. Felix Ehrat, who along with former Chief Executive Officer Joe Jimenez signed the agreement with a consulting firm led by lawyer ...

Bloomberg An Indian tribunal ordered billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Communications Ltd. be placed under insolvency proceedings, jeopardising the phone company’s proposed $3.7 billion asset sale to Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. The Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal on Tuesday accepted a petition from the Indian unit of network-equipment maker Ericsson AB, which is seeking to recover 11.6 billion ...

Bloomberg Masayoshi Son, the founder and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group Corp., is already thinking about his next $100 billion venture — a version 2.0 of the world’s biggest technology fund, according to people familiar with the matter. The Japanese entrepreneur has held preliminary discussions with investors about committing to a second fund as early as 2019, the people ...

Bloomberg Some of Asia’s biggest infrastructure investors are seeing plenty of opportunities in India. In China’s mammoth Belt-and-Road initiative, however, not so much. India is a key market for Macquarie Group thanks to strong economic growth and state asset sales, said Frank Kwok, co-head of Asia Pacific at Macquarie Infrastructure & Real Assets. Hence its recent purchase of nine toll-roads ...