Bloomberg German beauty retailer Douglas GmbH is tackling its 2.1 billion-euro ($2.5 billion) debt pile after struggling through a series of pandemic-fueled lockdowns that shuttered its stores across Europe for almost a year. The 179-year-old firm, owned by CVC, is seeking to refinance its bonds and loans with new debt supported by a 220 million-euro equity injection. CVC was coming …

Bloomberg Nike Inc. fell the most since October after its pandemic rebound suffered a setback last quarter, when supply-chain problems kept products from reaching North America, its biggest market. The athleticwear giant, which posted surprisingly strong growth in the previous quarter, missed Wall Street estimates with its latest results. Sales amounted to $10.4 billion in the third quarter — far …

Bloomberg Norse Atlantic Airways is copying more than just the long-haul playbook of insolvent discounter Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA. It’s using the carrier’s old planes. The startup airline has agreed to lease nine Boeing Co. 787 jets formerly used by Norwegian, Norse Chief Executive Officer Bjorn Tore Larsen said in an interview. The new company, which announced that it plans …

Bloomberg Canadian retailers got a boost in February after public-health authorities lifted lockdowns. Retail sales rise 4.0% on the month, preliminary data by Statistics Canada show. The bounce-back comes after a 1.1% drop in receipts in January and a 3.7% decline in December, when many businesses were forced to close because of a second wave of Covid-19 pandemic. But the …

Bloomberg Volkswagen AG plans to widen cost-saving efforts and standardise key technologies as the German manufacturer seeks to rival Tesla Inc. on electric cars and keep traditional rivals at bay. VW targets 1 million electric-vehicle sales this year and aims to become the global EV market leader by 2025 at the latest, the company said. By 2030, the share of …

Bloomberg BMW AG’s Mini brand will go all-electric from 2030 as the automaker intensifies its transition to battery-powered vehicles, according to people familiar with the matter. The iconic British brand will roll out its last combustion-engine variant in 2025, and around half of all Mini sales should be electric by 2027, one of the people said, declining to be named …

Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc. is expanding digital medical consultations to its employees across the US and says it will start offering the service to other companies. Together with the launch of an online pharmacy in December, the initiative marks Amazon’s entry into the gargantuan US health care industry. Medical services have long been seen as a target for Amazon, both to …

Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co. warned it’s grappling with the fallout from a “serious imbalance” in semiconductors globally, becoming the largest tech giant to voice concerns about chip shortages spreading beyond the automaking industry. Samsung, one of the world’s largest makers of chips and consumer electronics, expects the crunch to pose a problem to its business next quarter, co-Chief Executive Officer …

Bloomberg The autonomous-car artificial intelligence (AI) from Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo avoided or mitigated crashes in most of a set of virtually recreated fatal accidents, according to a white paper the company. The simulations were based on 72 fatal crashes that occurred between 2008 and 2017 in Chandler, Arizona, where Waymo currently operates a small-scale autonomous ride-hail service based on its …

Bloomberg Alphabet Inc.’s Google is halving the percentage it takes from app developers on sales through its Google Play store, following a similar move by rival Apple Inc. last year. The Mountain View, California-based internet giant said it’s reducing the fees to 15% from 30% for the first $1 million in revenue on sales of apps and in-app-purchases each year. …