Mark Whitehouse U.S. job growth rebounded in June from a brief slump that had many concerned about the outlook for the economy. The crucial question now: How long can it go on? The employment report for June suggests that U.S. employers were doing well in the weeks before Britain’s vote to leave the European Union. The Labor Department’s establishment ...

One of the U.S.’s biggest economic challenges is the slump in productivity. After climbing steadily for many decades, productivity has slowed dramatically since 2011: Productivity is the key to long-term prosperity. It represents a hard ceiling on the amount of valuable things that a society is able to produce. If productivity flatlines, it means that the pie isn’t growing, and ...

  BLOOMBERG A surge in prices for existing homes in Vancouver and Toronto is fueling new construction in Canada’s two most expensive cities. Housing starts jumped to an annualised pace of 218,333 units in June, the Canada Mortgage & Housing Corp. said, the highest since September and a 17 percent increase from a month earlier. The data suggests that builders ...

  Hong Kong / AFP Hong Kong property tycoon Thomas Kwok was granted bail on Tuesday, clearing the path to appeal his graft conviction over a high-profile cash for favours scandal. Kwok was jailed in 2014 over a series of payments totalling HK$8.5 million (US$1.1 million) to the city’s former deputy leader Rafael Hui, who was also convicted on graft ...

  Bloomberg Aberdeen Asset Management Plc appointed broker Strutt & Parker LLP to sell a London office property that’s part of a UK real estate fund currently suspended from trading, according to three people familiar with the matter. The asset manager will offer 10 Hammersmith Grove, an office building valued at about 105 million pounds ($136 million), the people said, ...

  Frankfurt / AFP German property firms expect a boom in Frankfurt as financial businesses move activities and staff out of London in the wake of Brexit, an industry survey showed this week. A majority of 72 percent of respondents believed financial centre Frankfurt, rather than rivals Dublin, Paris, or Amsterdam, would gain the most from Britain leaving the European ...

  Bloomberg Banks burned by soured home loans in the aftermath of the housing bust and subsequent financial crisis found a quick replacement; mortgages secured by commercial properties ranging from malls to offices. In the years since 2008, US lenders have opened the commercial real estate (CRE) credit spigots, lending money underpinned by properties including hotels, multifamily rental units, and ...

  Bloomberg Bombardier Inc. is targetting a major European aircraft order as the next step in the recovery of its C Series programme following a $5.6 billion sale to Delta Air Lines Inc. that helped turn around the jetliner’s prospects. The Canadian planemaker expects a “strong second half of the year” for its marquee jet, which is more than two ...

  Shanghai / AFP An aircraft leasing company will buy 30 of China’s homegrown regional jets for an Indonesian airline to use, a statement said, just two weeks after the ARJ21 made its first commercial flight. Beijing is keen to build an aerospace industry of its own, and almost all orders for the long-delayed ARJ21 aircraft — which was supposed to ...

  London / AFP Burberry appointed Celine chairman Marco Gobbetti as its next chief executive, replacing Christopher Bailey who will become the British luxury fashion group’s new president. Gobbetti, currently the chairman and chief executive of French luxury brand Celine, will join the board in 2017 “as soon as he is contractually able to do so”, Burberry said in a recent ...