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Bloomberg Bharti Airtel Ltd. agreed to merge its tower unit with Indus Towers Ltd. in a deal that creates a $14.6 billion operator of telecom facilities that’s the largest outside China. The merger with Bharti Infratel Ltd. creates an entity controlling more than 163,000 towers across India, Bharti Airtel said in a statement. Under the deal, Bharti Infratel agreed to ...

Bloomberg Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma argues that nations from Japan to China need to develop their own semiconductor technology to get around America’s grip on the global chip market. The billionaire executive chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., explaining the e-commerce titan’s growing interest in chips including this month’s acquisition of local design-house Hangzhou C-Sky Microsystems Co., said he’s motivated ...

Bloomberg China’s policies to cut pollution is driving a rapid move toward electric vehicles in the world’s biggest market and causing an upheaval in the global auto industry, Aston Martin Holdings Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Andy Palmer said. “This whole show is revolving around what they call new energy vehicles, but Chinese policy is very much driving the move towards ...

Bloomberg US prosecutors are nearing their first charges against companies in an almost four-year-old criminal investigation into alleged price-fixing by generic-drug makers, according to people familiar with the matter. At least two companies are on track to be indicted in the coming months, in addition to several executives, said two people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation ...

Bloomberg Comcast Corp. formalised its 22 billion pound ($30.7 billion) bid for Sky Plc, throwing down the gauntlet to Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox Inc. and Walt Disney Co as they vie for Britain’s largest pay-TV broadcaster. Sky’s independent board members welcomed the offer and said they’re withdrawing their recommendation that shareholders accept the Fox proposal. Comcast is offering 12.50 ...

Bloomberg A US House committee has begun a new investigation into allegations of overseas emissions cheating by Volkswagen AG and was seeking testimony from the automaker’s chief executive officer Herbert Diess. In a letter, House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, said the committee was investigating reports that Volkswagen “continues to circumvent global emissions requirements” ...

Bloomberg Britons were only beginning to use steam engines, canals and factories the last time the UK experienced such a poor decade of productivity. Total factory productivity since 2007 was the worst since the late eighteenth century, around the time of the industrial revolution, according to a Bank of England blog post on Wednesday. Average productivity growth was negative for ...

Bloomberg Twitter Inc.’s push into live video and more personalised content is finally starting to pay off, boosting revenue and profit more than projected in the first quarter by luring users and advertisers. The shares rose. Sales jumped 21 percent, the most in two years, to $664.9 million, Twitter said on Wednesday in a statement. That surpassed the average analysts’ ...

ABU DHABI / WAM The Committee for Goods and Materials Subject to Import and Export Control started a three-day meeting yesterday with a delegation from the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), to discuss the means of strengthening their cooperation in regulating the gold trade, according to the best international practices. The meeting was headed by Talal ...

ABU DHABI / WAM UAE’s space programs, including the planned launch of the first Arab probe to Mars by 2021, known as Emirates Mars Mission, are beacons of hope for Arabs to blaze a trail and achieve distinction in this domain, according to Dr Farouk El-Baz, Director of the Centre for Remote Sensing at Boston University, and Member of the ...