Bloomberg Britons booking a break in some of Europe’s most popular holiday destinations this summer are seeing airfares climb by almost a third amid booming demand, high oil prices and curbs on airline capacity. Fares in the first week of August, the peak month for UK travel, were up 30% on average for the top 36 routes compared with pre-pandemic ...

  Bloomberg Hong Kong’s move to reduce mandatory hotel quarantine for international travellers isn’t enough to bring back tourists, according to Association of Asia Pacific Airlines Director General Subhas Menon. “It’s not time to bring out the bubbly,” Menon, whose group represents 14 Asia Pacific carriers including Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “It’s always ...

  Bloomberg Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd let go of 9,241 employees in the three months to June, according to the company’s latest filing. The Hangzhou-based firm reported it had just over 245,000 employees at the end of the most recent reporting quarter, cutting back during a period that marked its first ever contraction in revenue. Alibaba also ...

Bloomberg House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s swing through Asia aimed to convey the US’s “strong and unshakable” support for the region. It ended up leaving many countries in stunned silence as China conducted unprecedented military drills around Taiwan. The shockwaves from the highest-level US visit to Taiwan in a quarter century are still reverberating around the region days after she flew ...

  Bloomberg China used US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei as a pretext to prepare for a possible Taiwan invasion and expand its control throughout the region, the island’s foreign minister said, adding Beijing had been planning the move for some time. China’s recent military drills in the seas and air around Taiwan were aimed at changing the ...

  Bloomberg Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy expressed his gratitude to US President Joe Biden for what he called “another unprecedented security aid package” to help the country defend itself against Russia’s invasion. Biden’s administration earlier announced $4.5 billion in additional direct budgetary support and $1 billion more in military aid, the largest drawdown from existing inventories since the war began, ...

  Bloomberg The UK economy probably shrank for the first time since the nation was in a coronavirus lockdown at the start of 2021, adding to pressure for action from the contenders vying to take over as prime minister. Gross domestic product for the second quarter probably shrank 0.2%, according to a survey of economists by Bloomberg News ahead of ...

  Bloomberg Apple Inc, which used to acquire a company every three or four weeks, has dramatically slowed its dealmaking in the past two years, a sign the tech giant is being more choosy in the face of a shaky economy and heightened government scrutiny. The company spent just $33 million on payments connected to acquisitions in its last fiscal ...

  Bloomberg Pfizer Inc has agreed to buy Global Blood Therapeutics Inc, the maker of a drug for sickle-cell disease, in a deal worth $5.4 billion. The New York drug giant will pay $68.50 for all outstanding shares of Global Blood, the companies said in a statement before US markets opened. That’s double the price of the stock on August ...

  Bloomberg Veolia Environnement SA agreed to sell Suez SA’s waste activities in Britain to Macquarie Group Ltd. for 2.4 billion euros ($2.44 billion) after the country’s antitrust authority raised competition concerns. Veolia’s announcement, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report, marks the last step in its acquisition of a large chunk of French rival Suez, which was completed in other ...