Bloomberg Comcast Corp. formalised its 22 billion pound ($30.7 billion) bid for Sky Plc, throwing down the gauntlet to Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox Inc. and Walt Disney Co as they vie for Britain’s largest pay-TV broadcaster. Sky’s independent board members welcomed the offer and said they’re withdrawing their recommendation that shareholders accept the Fox proposal. Comcast is offering 12.50 ...

Bloomberg A US House committee has begun a new investigation into allegations of overseas emissions cheating by Volkswagen AG and was seeking testimony from the automaker’s chief executive officer Herbert Diess. In a letter, House Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, said the committee was investigating reports that Volkswagen “continues to circumvent global emissions requirements” ...

Bloomberg Britons were only beginning to use steam engines, canals and factories the last time the UK experienced such a poor decade of productivity. Total factory productivity since 2007 was the worst since the late eighteenth century, around the time of the industrial revolution, according to a Bank of England blog post on Wednesday. Average productivity growth was negative for ...

Bloomberg Twitter Inc.’s push into live video and more personalised content is finally starting to pay off, boosting revenue and profit more than projected in the first quarter by luring users and advertisers. The shares rose. Sales jumped 21 percent, the most in two years, to $664.9 million, Twitter said on Wednesday in a statement. That surpassed the average analysts’ ...

How much debt can the US government afford? Nobody knows for sure, but it’s pushing the envelope like never before — or at least more than it has since World War II. In its latest Global Fiscal Monitor report, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) offers an admonishment for the world’s developed nations: Use this period of economic growth to pay ...

Rather than looking at what investors expect, perhaps the better question is: What does the European Central Bank (ECB) want to achieve out of its April 26 meeting? Sticking the euro in a box is the answer. Currency stability helps its cause as it manages the delicate balancing act of bringing its QE stimulus packages to a close sometime this ...

UBS Group AG CEO Sergio Ermotti is running out of goodies to sustain the Swiss bank’s premium valuation. After a poor end to 2017, he tried to placate shareholders with buybacks. Now, he is counting on growth at the investment bank to drive future returns. But with a blowout quarter for trading behind us, and more work to do to ...

“What happens to you here is forever,” warns O’Brien, an agent of the Thought Police, in “1984. He would’ve loved the internet. Online, everything is forever. All the sites you visit, articles you like, posts you share: They’re in the permanent file. Facebook Inc.’s most recent scandal — in which it allowed an outside company to furtively collect its users’ ...

When August 2016 began, Paul Manafort was about 11 weeks into his job as chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign. But despite the political tumult, Manafort found time that month to meet at a swank Manhattan cigar bar with someone the FBI has suggested has ties to Russian intelligence. By the time August ended, Manafort was gone — having resigned after ...

Nobody expects Deutsche Bank AG to set the world alight when it reports first-quarter results on Thursday — the lender has already warned that profit will be hit by adverse currency movements and higher funding costs. But it’s a perfect time for new CEO Christian Sewing to front-load the bad news and announce some bold decisions. That means taking the ...