Bloomberg Italy will impose a windfall profit tax of 10% on some energy companies to finance a 4.4 billion-euro ($4.9 billion) package of measures to protect consumers and businesses from soaring prices. The levy will be calculated on the increase in profit that energy companies reported between October 2021 and March 2022, compared with the same period the previous year. ...

In November 1939, soon after Hitler’s Germany invaded Poland, another massive European country likewise attacked a smaller neighbour: Russia invaded Finland. After vicious fighting through a long and bitter winter, the war ended with the Moscow Peace Treaty, in which Finnish concessions fell far short of what Stalin had hoped for in launching his invasion. Despite being heavily outgunned and ...

  Private equity firms feasted on the cheap UK stock market for as long as they could in 2021. Eventually, investors bid up the share prices of much of their potential prey. But one target — educational publisher Pearson Plc — just kept falling. Now buyout firm Apollo Global Management Inc. is circling. Pearson investors must be desperate to sell, ...

  The gender pay gap among the top ranks of US firms ought to be narrowing. Corporations have long been under pressure to increase the number of women on their boards. And yet the measure has widened. This should sound an alarm over the persistent lack of women in leadership roles — but it also underscores how stock-based compensation is ...

  Ever since the 1970s, European Green parties have argued passionately for cutting carbon emissions from the continent’s energy, while at the same time reflexively shunning the world’s only reliable source of zero-carbon electricity: nuclear power. Russia’s Ukrainian invasion is punching big holes in the logic of this position. That is especially true in Germany and Belgium, countries where the ...

  Bloomberg Mexico City’s newest airport, opening on March 21, is meant to relieve traffic at the mega-city’s main hub. The eight daily flights it will start with won’t achieve this — but that’s beside the point for President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The Felipe Angeles airport, located about 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of Mexico City’s centre, is a ...

Bloomberg A Superior Court judge dismissed Washington’s lawsuit accusing Amazon.com Inc of anticompetitive behaviour, saying there wasn’t evidence supporting the claim that the e-commerce giant inflated prices for consumers. Attorney General Karl Racine sued Amazon last year, alleging it encourages higher-than-necessary consumer prices through policies that guarantee the tech giant a minimum profit on each item sold, while discouraging the ...

Bloomberg The Biden administration identified billionaire Roman Abramovich’s Gulfstream business jet among 100 for apparent violations of the nation’s export controls imposed over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The sanctions apply to commercial and private aircraft destined for Russia and Belarus in recent weeks, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said in a statement. Other planes were listed as ...

Bloomberg Russia has turned more destructive artillery, including “Kinzhal” hypersonic missiles, against Ukrainian cities, a top Ukrainian aide said. “Kinzhal & Bastion systems are used against peaceful cities,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Twitter. It was the first official response from Ukraine to Russia’s claims that it has fired the powerful missiles ...

  Bloomberg South Korea convened a National Security Council (NSC) meeting to discuss North Korea’s launch of a short-range projectile, according to the presidential office. North Korea appears to have fired from its multiple rocket launcher this morning, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said in a text message to reporters. The military has been maintaining defense readiness while ...