Bloomberg JD.com Inc’s billionaire founder Richard Liu has stepped down as chief executive officer of China’s No. 2 online retailer, joining tech tycoons that exited top management roles after Beijing’s sweeping internet-sector crackdown. Xu Lei, who was recently promoted to president after more than a decade at the company, takes the helm of the e-commerce titan effective immediately. Liu’s lieutenant …

  Bloomberg European equities started the week on a negative note as investors weighed an array of risks from China’s Covid-19 flare up to an uncomfortably tight race for the French presidency, surging bond yields and the war in Ukraine. The Stoxx 600 Europe Index falls 0.2% as of 8:52 am in London, tracking Asian stocks lower. Technology stocks were …

  Bloomberg Bitcoin’s tendency to move in tandem with technology stocks means the biggest cryptocurrency may slump to $30,000 by June, according to Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of crypto trading platform BitMEX. Hayes, in a blog post on Monday, also said the same dynamic could drive Ether to $2,500. The tokens traded at around $42,300 and $3,180, respectively, at 12:43 …

Bloomberg Oil retreated for a second week in the wake of plans for massive stockpile releases, a demand-sapping virus outbreak in China and a hawkish turn from the US Federal Reserve. West Texas Intermediate fell 1% this week, with the US benchmark giving back most of its gains since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February. Oil rallied to the highest …

  Bloomberg Britain’s unemployed face a further blow when the value of their welfare benefits is set to fall the most in half a century, according to new research. Analysis by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows the decline comes with the real value of out-of-work benefits already at historically low levels because the Treasury froze payouts or increased them by …

  Bloomberg Isolated from any other country’s power networks, Iceland has this winter faced a new predicament: running out of electricity. Sitting in the Atlantic Ocean, 850 kilometres (530 miles) from the Scottish coast, the country had to be self-sufficient in electricity generation, and power was always so plentiful that a large aluminum-smelting industry emerged half a century ago to …

  Bloomberg Promoters of a stalled project to build a C$9 billion ($7.2 billion) terminal to export liquefied natural gas from Quebec in Canada are seeking to revive the plan by garnering support from Europe, which is scrambling to find alternatives to Russian supplies. GNL Quebec Inc’s Energie Saguenay project was rejected by both the federal and provincial authorities recently …

Bloomberg Europe’s push to wean itself off Russian natural gas is sparking billions of dollars in new commitments toward building a market for low-carbon hydrogen. A nearly 450% jump in European gas prices the past year made the green fuel of the future cost-competitive about a decade ahead of schedule, according to BloombergNEF. Now, investment funds are joining governments and …

  Bloomberg Spirit Airlines Inc will hold talks with JetBlue Airways Corp over its $3.6 billion cash takeover bid that’s threatening to disrupt a pending combination between Spirit and rival deep discounter Frontier Group Holdings Inc. JetBlue’s offer could lead to a superior proposal, Spirit said in a statement after assessing the bid with financial and legal advisers. JetBlue’s unsolicited …

Bloomberg Deutsche Lufthansa AG has about 10 billion euros ($11 billion) more debt because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to CEO Carsten Spohr. “That’s the price tag,” Spohr said in an interview with newspaper Schweiz am Wochenende. “It was expensive.” The German carrier hopes that its Swiss airline will pay back its pandemic-related government-backed loans by the end of the …