Retail

  Bloomberg Hong Kong KFC’s partnership with an Alibaba affiliate puts the pressure on the Golden Arches in China more than ever. By allying with a backer of the country’s top food delivery website, KFC owner Yum Brands has taken a step toward solving the dilemma of slowing growth in its biggest market outside the US. It’s a deal that ...

  Madrid / AFP Spain’s heavily indebted Telefonica said on Monday it plans to float a minority stake in infrastructure subsidiary Telxius and was mulling doing the same with its British unit O2. The Telxius listing is expected by the end of the year with a free float of at least 25 percent, the company said in a regulatory filing. ...

  Bloomberg Poland’s largest trade union submitted a draft bill to parliament restrict retail trade on Sundays, rejecting warnings from employers’ groups that such regulation would eliminate a quarter of the 400,000 jobs at shopping centers across the country. The Solidarnosc union collected more than half a million signatures, or five times more than required to submit a bill to ...

  Bloomberg For Marks & Spencer, abandoning Europe is back in fashion. Investors should be grateful, but really, they should look to clean up the domestic closet as well. In 2001, when then-executive chairman Luc Vandevelde pledged to revive the retail chain’s domestic performance, he abandoned its foray onto the continent. Today, battling nimbler rivals on its home turf, new ...

  Bloomberg Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will relocate about 7,000 back-office workers as the world’s largest retail chain tries to make its stores more efficient. The employees — a handful at each of its 3,500 supercenters — will be moved to other parts of the stores, according to Deisha Barnett, a spokeswoman for the Bentonville, Arkansas-based company. The workers’ pay could ...

  Bloomberg A consortium led by Simon Property Group Inc. and General Growth Properties Inc. won an auction for the assets of Aeropostale Inc., with a plan to keep open at least 229 of the bankrupt teen retailer’s stores. The bidding group will also keep the chain’s online business and licensing operation up and running, according to a statement. The ...

  Bloomberg Billionaire Carlos Slim led a consortium that won one of the runway contracts for Mexico City’s new airport, as the government handed out the first big awards for the $13 billion construction project. A unit of Slim’s Grupo Carso SAB — along with partners GIA+A, Promotora y Desarrolladora Mexicana and La Peninsular Cia. Constructora — submitted a bid ...

  Blomberg Aeropostale Inc., the bankrupt teen clothing chain, says a group including mall operators General Growth Properties Inc. and Simon Property Group Inc. has bid for “substantially all” its assets with an eye toward keeping at least 229 stores open. The so-called going concern bid would also cover expenses including Aeropostale’s bankruptcy financing, the company said in a filing ...

  Brussels / AFP Silicon Valley tech titan Apple will fight an EU demand for a record 13 billion euros in back taxes in Ireland, a move Washington warned could damage transatlantic economic ties. Brussels said Apple, the world’s most valuable company, avoided virtually all tax on its business in the bloc by illegal arrangements with Dublin which gave the ...

  Bloomberg Prada SpA shares rose as much as 15 percent after Chairman Carlo Mazzi forecast that the Italian luxury-goods maker will return to growth in sales and earnings next year, helped by cost-cutting and online expansion in Asia. This year “is a turning point and we are now firmly on the path to sustainable growth in revenues and earnings ...