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Bloomberg The world’s biggest labour market will soon get its first regularly updated monthly jobless rate similar to closely-watched gauges in other major economies like the US and Europe. Monthly updates of China’s survey-based urban unemployment rate will be released from April, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics said. Until now, the only regular official unemployment rate has been a ...

Bloomberg PE firms including Warburg Pincus are vying with suitors across Asia for control of a TPG-backed Indonesian consumer finance company, people with knowledge of the matter said. Taiwan’s Cathay Financial Holding Co. and South Korea’s Shinhan Financial Group Co. are among first-round bidders for a stake in PT BFI Finance Indonesia, said the people, who asked not to be ...

Bloomberg CVS Health Corp. completed the third-largest corporate bond sale on record to fund its acquisition of Aetna Inc., testing the appetite of a market that’s off to its worst annual start in decades. The pharmacy giant issued $40 billion of investment-grade debt in a nine-part offering, people with knowledge of the matter said. That’s surpassed only by Verizon Communication ...

Bloomberg The European Union voiced mounting concern over US President Donald Trump’s plan to impose punitive import tariffs, as Germany signalled alarm over the resignation of pro-trade Trump adviser Gary Cohn in an emerging trans-Atlantic dispute over protectionism. “We hope that eventually this initiative from the US side will not be followed through,” European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis said ...

Bloomberg BlackBerry Ltd., seeking ways to stem revenue declines, is dusting off its old patents and asking other companies to pay up for using technology BlackBerry claims it invented years ago. The latest skirmish broke out, when BlackBerry sued Facebook Inc in federal court in Los Angeles, claiming the social media giant has built swaths of its empire on messaging ...

Bloomberg UK pension liabilities increased by 7.6 trillion pounds in the five years through 2015, government figures published on Wednesday show. They stood at 7.6 trillion pounds, with the state pension—a universal entitlement paid by the government—accounting for more than half the amount, the Office for National Statistics said. There were more than 2 trillion pounds of entitlements linked to ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s threat that he could tax cars imported from Europe was premised on the idea that German automakers pour Benzes and Bimmers into the US while making it “impossible” for American cars to sell there. General Motors Co., America’s largest carmaker, largely bailed from Europe last year for reasons that had less to do with protectionism than ...

ABU DHABI / WAM The UAE Central Bank has announced that the money supply aggregate M1 increased 1.1%, from AED492.4 billion at the end of December 2017 to AED498 billion at the end of January 2018. In a statement, the bank said, “The money supply aggregate M2 increased by 0.1%, from AED1276.2 billion at the end of December 2017 to ...

Abu DHABI / Agencies Etisalat, the biggest telecommunications company in the United Arab Emirates, is seeking to buy back stock valued at as much as $2 billion. The shares climbed. The board of Emirates Telecommunications Group, also known as Etisalat, recommended purchasing up to five percent of the phone operator’s paid-up capital, or 434.8 million shares, the Abu Dhabi-based company ...

DUBAI / WAM Members of the Dubai Internet City (DIC) community have collectively attracted AED7.8 billion ($2.12 billion) in funding since its launch, the largest technology business hub in the region announced on Tuesday. The impressive figure bears testimony to Dubai’s success in attracting the best and brightest businesses, making the emirate one of the main drivers of technological innovation ...