Bloomberg Electricite de France (EDF) SA kicked off a deeply discounted rights offering of more than 3.1 billion euros ($3.4 billion), a stopgap measure as the state prepares to overhaul the ailing nuclear power giant. A broader reform of the debt-laden utility is planned by President Emmanuel Macron, who said some EDF assets should be nationalised. The firm, already ...

  Bloomberg Italy’s government is set to approve a new set of measures to cushion families and businesses from continuing increases in energy and fuel prices. The new aid won’t require additional borrowing for the time being, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said during a press conference in Rome. The package is set to be approved at a cabinet meeting. Financing ...

  Bloomberg TotalEnergies SE has been warned by two UK shareholders that they would divest their stakes if the French company fails to exit its businesses in Russia. The Church of England Pensions Board and the Church Commissioners for England are turning up the heat on the energy major’s Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne, a sign of the pressure companies ...

  Bloomberg Spain plans to set temporary limits on power prices in the coming weeks, in one of the boldest attempts in Europe to stem a surge in energy costs that has forced industries to shut operations and furlough workers. Ecological Transition Minister Teresa Ribera said she is confident the European Council will give the green light to limits at ...

Bloomberg Swedish battery-maker Northvolt AB is building a new plant in northern Germany as European car manufacturers accelerate their shift to electric vehicles. The factory, dubbed “Northvolt Drei,” would produce 60-gigawatt hours of battery capacity annually, the company said. Northvolt expects it to produce its first lithium-ion batteries in 2025. The new plant in Germany will boost Northvolt’s overall battery-cell ...

As a young KGB officer stationed in Dresden, Vladimir Putin became fluent in German and went on to fancy himself quite the expert on his host culture. How ironic that decades later his actions have led to a turning point in German history that he won’t like, but the world should welcome. When Putin launched his unprovoked war of aggression ...

The recent surge in gasoline prices suggests we might see a reversal in consumers’ years-long shift towards trucks or sports-utility vehicles (SUV) back to more modest, fuel-efficient vehicles. But don’t expect automakers to go along. We’re not likely to have an adequate supply of the basic gasoline-powered family sedan ever again, thanks to the transition to electric vehicles, continuing supply ...

Perhaps the saying, “There is no such thing as bad publicity,” holds true for controversial technology companies. New York-based Clearview AI has been criticised by privacy advocates for years because of the way it has scraped billions of images from social-media networks to build a search engine for faces used by police departments. It was the subject of a New ...

  Let’s talk about presidenting during a crisis. A crisis, the late political scientist Nelson W Polsby used to say, is “a period where everybody believes that something must be done.” The Russian invasion of Ukraine certainly fits that definition — and it’s both an opportunity and a danger for a presidency. The opportunity side of it is captured in ...

  Bloomberg Oyo, the high-profile affordable lodging startup that filed for an initial public offering last year, is considering slashing its fundraising target by half or even shelving the debut, according to people familiar with the matter. Faced with headwinds including slumping stock markets, Oyo-operator Oravel Stays Ltd could clip its Indian IPO from the nearly $1 billion initially sought ...