Bloomberg Walmart Inc’s Indian e-commerce operation Flipkart invested 15 billion rupees ($204 million) in Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd as it looks to bolster its presence in one of the world’s fastest-growing retail markets. Billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla’s retail business will issue preference shares to Flipkart, giving it a 7.8% stake, Aditya Birla Fashion said in an exchange filing. …

Bloomberg The recovery in Canadian retail sales is fizzling Sales eked out a gain of 0.4% in August, Statistics Canada said in Ottawa. That fell short of the 1.1% median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists. Excluding vehicles, receipts rose 0.5%, versus a forecast gain of 0.9%. After cratering in April on mandatory lockdowns, retail sales increased for four …

Bloomberg A coalition of airline and travel industry groups is urging top US officials to develop standards for rapid testing and other measures to sidestep the growing quarantine restrictions imposed by states. Eighteen states have some type of quarantine for people arriving from Covid-19 hot spots, but “this patchwork of rules is confusing and discourages travel,” the group of 20 …

Bloomberg The Swiss National Bank (SNB) could be forced to sell a chunk of its more than $100 billion US stock portfolio as part of a campaign to ban it from investing in defense companies. A poll by gfs.bern for public broadcaster SRG showed 54% of voters in favour of the proposal, which goes to a national vote on November …

Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. is exploring the sale of its asset-management unit as the biggest banks choose paths of diving deeper into the business or getting out. The Wells Fargo unit could fetch more than $3 billion, according to a person briefed on the matter, who said the bank began discussing a possible deal with other asset managers and …

Bloomberg Barclays Plc Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jes Staley’s drive to make investment banking the centerpiece of his strategy paid off in the third quarter, with equities trading in a volatile market beating the bank’s Wall Street peers. The shares approached a two-month high. The London-based bank’s equity trading income jumped 40% and foreign-exchange, rates and credit trading rises 23%, …

Bloomberg The Riksbank governor, Stefan Ingves, fears the economic outlook is deteriorating amid signs the coronavirus pandemic is tightening its grip across Europe, and ensnaring Sweden again too. “If you look at our forecasts, it will take a few years before GDP is back” at pre-crisis levels, Ingves said in an interview in Stockholm. “And those forecasts were done before …

Bloomberg There’s so much cash in Europe there are just not enough bonds to go around. The amount of spare liquidity in the euro-area economy hit an all-time high of 3.2 trillion euros ($3.8 trillion) this month and plenty of that is chasing any new debt issue. This was seen in the record 233 billion euros of orders for the …

Bloomberg Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. is ruling out further job cuts at its brokerage business in Asia after a lengthy overhaul, even as global banks trim headcount during the pandemic. “We are done with it — it’s over,” Saburo Araki, chief executive officer of Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Holdings Co., said in an interview. “It must have been painful for …

Bloomberg In the country that pioneered the world’s first industrial revolution in the 18th century, its latest one is looking very much on hold. The global shift towards robotics and artificial intelligence across advanced economies is currently in a go-slow phase in the UK — where both Covid-19 and Brexit have hampered progress. That threatens to harm Britain’s competitiveness against …