Bloomberg With European banking mergers at their lowest on record — and profits slumping — politicians are finally getting more serious about the need for consolidation. German finance minister Olaf Scholz is seeking to persuade European colleagues of the need for a banking union. He called publicly last month for a deposit insurance system that works across the region, a …

Bloomberg Facebook Inc is pursuing rights to music videos from major record labels, programming that could boost interest in its Watch video service, according to people familiar with the matter. The company is in the midst of negotiating new licensing deals with the three largest music companies, Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group, and has asked for …

Bloomberg It’s mid-December, which means it’s time for the staff prognosticators at Bloomberg Technology to sheepishly revisit last year’s predictions while peering ahead with a brash certainty that we haven’t earned. On its surface, 2019 was the difficult year that most of us anticipated. The simmering trade tensions (perhaps diffused by the new phase-one trade agreement) raised the prospect of …