Bloomberg EG Group is exploring a merger of its petrol forecourts with Asda Group Ltd. to create a business valued at more than £10 billion ($12 billion), according to the The Times. The Issa brothers and London-based TDR Capital are considering the combination with the supermarket chain to help refinance £7 billion of debt due in 2025, the paper ...

  Bloomberg The US and other industrialized countries may be able to bring inflation down without triggering the huge jumps in unemployment that economists may have predicted prior to the pandemic, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. If correct, that might improve the chances for a soft landing of the US economy as the Fed ...

Bloomberg UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will look to begin closing a series of pay deals with trade unions, as the government enters 10 days of crunch talks ahead of coordinated strike action planned for early February. Members of the Cabinet have told Sunak he must act fast to avoid a week of strikes that threaten to bring the country ...

  Bloomberg Auto supplier ZF Friedrichhafen AG and Wolfspeed Inc. plan to build a $3 billion wafer factory in Germany’s Saarland to make chips for electric vehicles and other applications, a boon for a region dependent on combustion-engine components, said people familiar with the matter. The go-ahead for the project is subject to commitments on subsidies amounting to a quarter ...

Bloomberg Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said time is running out to give Ukraine the advanced weapons it needs before an expected Russian offensive in the spring, as both the US and Germany hold out against Kyiv’s requests for their most powerful battle tanks. Austin said allied officials agreed at a meeting in Germany on Friday they would ensure that ...

Bloomberg Germany and France renewed calls for a more closely aligned Europe to counter the imperialist ambitions of Russian President Vladimir Putin and to bolster the democratic values that underpin the EU. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Sunday to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Elysee Treaty, which was ...

  Bloomberg Ten people were killed and ten wounded in a mass shooting in Monterey Park, a city east of Los Angeles, following a popular Lunar New Year celebration, the Associated Press reported, citing police. Bob Boese, an officer with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said the suspect was a male and is still at large. The shooting was ...

  Bloomberg Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva dismissed the nation’s top army commander on Saturday, two weeks after rioters stormed public buildings in the capital, Brasilia. Julio Cesar de Arruda will be replaced by Tomas Miguel Ribeiro Paiva, currently chief of the army in the country’s southeast region, Defense Minister Jose Mucio said at a briefing Saturday. The ...

  Bloomberg Venezuela freed the former head of the government’s intelligence agency five years after he was arrested for allegedly instigating a rebellion against President Nicolas Maduro, according to people familiar with the matter. Miguel Rodriguez Torres, a former major general in the army who fell out of Maduro’s favor, was set free Saturday morning and left the country for ...

Bloomberg A retired general pledging unequivocal support for Ukraine is favored to defeat a billionaire former premier in the final round of the Czech presidential election next weekend, opinion polls showed. In the first round of voting last week, Petr Pavel, who once served as Nato’s highest-ranking military official, finished first by a razor-thin margin, ahead of former Prime Minister ...