The $3.2 billion acquisition of Finisar Corp. by II-VI Inc. (pronounced “two-six”) is really about one thing: how much it costs Apple Inc. to build iPhones with Face ID. After the first whispers emerged in 2016 that Apple was considering facial recognition technology for the iPhone, the stocks of 3-D sensor makers surged inside a few months. The story over ...

Not long ago, it was difficult for payments processors to avoid being taken over. Worldpay was sold by Royal Bank of Scotland Plc in the crisis, taken public and bought again in eight years. Nordic payments group Nets went from being owned by a group of banks to private equity ownership, to public markets, before going back into private equity ...

What could the European Central Bank (ECB) realistically do to help Italy, even if it were so minded? Not much, is the depressing answer – in specific new aid anyway. That’s unless Italy ends up getting itself in such a mess that it’s forced to hand over financial control and enter into another ECB bailout program. We’re nowhere near that ...