Bloomberg Jeff Bezos is the richest person in modern history. The Amazon.com Inc. founder’s net worth cracked $150 billion in New York, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. That’s about $55 billion more than Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, the world’s second-richest person. Bezos, 54, also has topped Gates in inflation-adjusted terms. The $100 billion mark that Gates hit briefly ...

Bloomberg Donald Trump’s economic policies have been a wash of sorts for US business investment. Ten percent of respondents surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics said they have accelerated spending as a result of the 2017 tax cuts. Meanwhile, 10 percent said they have delayed investment because of new tariffs and other trade policies, NABE’s survey of 98 ...

Bloomberg UK employment rose to a record high in the three months through May after the economy created jobs at a stronger-than-expected pace. The number of people in work rose by 137,000, taking the employment rate to 75.7 percent, the highest since records began in 1971, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday. Unemployment held at a 43-year low ...

Bloomberg For the first time, Walt Disney Co. spelled out for investors that 21st Century Fox Inc. may choose not to increase its takeover offer for British broadcaster Sky Plc. The revelation boosted speculation that Disney and Comcast Corp. may carve up Rupert Murdoch’s media empire rather than fighting to the end for the whole lot. Sky, the UK pay-TV ...

Bloomberg Looking out over his parched fields south of Berlin, dairy and grains farmer Thomas Gaebert is wishing for rains to save his crops after relentless hot weather. He is one of many farmers battling for survival after a heatwave and drought swept across northern parts of the continent, damaging crops from wheat to barley. Many German growers could go ...

Financial markets were of two minds last week about the impact of mounting trade tensions between China and the US. On the one hand, the escalating tit-for-tat tariffs still affect only a relatively small part of the two countries’ economies. The consensus baseline remains that the measures should not have a significant and lasting downward impact on the economy and ...

The biggest players in pharma and biotech firms are in a rut, and even a heroic earnings season might not be enough to lift it out. The broader environment is positive: The Trump administration’s drug-pricing push is for now more sound than fury, the economy is humming, and new treatments are being approved at a rapid clip. And of course ...

Happy birthday to Amazon. com Inc That is, after all, the occasion it’s marking with the Prime Day hoopla, right? Once again, it appears to be getting a pretty nice gift: heaps of media coverage for a 36-hour sprint of deals and discounts. But birthdays can also be a time for reflection. Amazon has become the default starting point for ...

Here’s the latest sign of who’s benefiting in President Donald Trump’s economy: Without the tax cut, bank earnings growth in the second quarter would have been pretty close to zilch. Instead, the nation’s six biggest banks are set to report a 14 percent improvement in earnings in the April-to-June period. Nine of every 10 dollars of that increase is thanks ...

The two sides in the great Brexit debate finally found something they can agree on: hatred of Prime Minister Theresa May’s European Union divorce-settlement plan. A growing number of the combatants even agree on the solution. That would be a second vote on whether leaving is a good idea. Leavers complain that the approach May laid out last week aligns ...