Bloomberg Brazilian Armed Forces maintain an open communication channel with Venezuela’s military even though Brasilia no longer recognizes Nicolas Maduro as president of the neighbouring Latin American country, according to Brazil’s Defense Minister. “It’s always useful to maintain this channel,” General Fernando Azevedo said at an interview in his office. “It’s part of the military diplomacy.” The dialogue is held ...

Bloomberg The European Union has to worry about one fewer member, for now, sliding into the nationalist-populist rising that’s roiling its post-communist wing. As the bloc’s executives wrangle over democratic standards with governments in Hungary, Poland and Romania, the presidential election in euro-member Slovakia propelled a supporter of deeper integration and a top EU diplomat into a runoff. The vote ...

Bloomberg Fidelity National Information Services Inc. agreed to acquire Worldpay Inc. for about $34 billion in cash and stock, the biggest deal ever in the booming international payments sector. FIS, based in Jacksonville, Florida, will also assume Worldpay’s debt, bringing the enterprise value of the deal to about $43 billion, the companies said on Monday. FIS’s current shareholders will own ...

Bloomberg Lyft Inc. is seeking to raise as much as $2.1 billion in its initial public offering, valuing the firm at up to $19.6 billion. The No. 2 US ride-hailing giant is offering 30.8 million shares at $62 to $68 each, it said in a regulatory filing on Monday. At the targeted range, the San Francisco-based company’s offering will be ...

Bloomberg Brazil’s sugar mills can make the switch into ethanol easier than ever before, making it harder to predict how much sweetener will come from the world’s biggest producer and exporter. Take the case of Sao Paulo-based Usina Batatais. Just two years ago, no matter how low sugar prices got, the company had no choice but send at least 45 ...

Bloomberg Big companies often leave their suppliers hanging for weeks without pay, but Vodafone Group Plc is taking this a step further: it’s investing in a fund that makes money off the delay. The British phone operator poured 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) into the 2.4 billion-euro fund run by beleaguered Swiss asset manager GAM Holding AG, which generates returns ...

Sen. Mark Warner is all for defense modernisation. But just don’t touch those aircraft carriers, six of which are based in Norfolk. The Virginia Democrat had said a year ago year that rather than investing in 20th-century military technology, he wanted to discuss “a reallocation of some of those resources” to deal with the 21st-century challenge of cyber threats. But ...

It was a week that began in tragedy with the second fatal crash of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max jet in five months, and it ended with the first of what could be many short-term financial warnings as the aviation industry grapples with only the third fleet-wide grounding by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) since the 1970s. We still don’t know ...

When it comes to Facebook Inc., Chris Cox has been very, very important to the company. He was an executive from the social network’s early years, a friend and vacation buddy of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a touchstone of the corporate culture and the person most responsible for the “news feed,” the stream of posts in Facebook that has become a ...

In a series of votes last week, Britain’s House of Commons decided to reject (again) Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit agreement with the European Union (EU); to rule out a no-deal Brexit; to delay the exit process; and to set aside, for now, calls for a second referendum. As you can see, the list of things Britain doesn’t want is ...