Bloomberg Protesters against France’s Covid-19 vaccine passes began driving toward Paris on Friday to attempt to block the capital, inspired by “freedom convoys” that began in Canada. On Facebook and Telegram, people shared videos of cars setting off from across the country, including Strasbourg, in the east, Brittany, in the west, the region around Lille, in the north, and ...

  Bloomberg The UK economy expanded at the fastest pace since World War II last year after suffering a milder hit than expected in December. The 7.5% expansion was the largest since 1941 and made Britain the fastest-growing advanced economy in 2021. The economy nonetheless remained smaller in the fourth quarter than at the end of 2019, before the pandemic ...

  Bloomberg There’s a big upside to record used-car prices: Auto lenders like GM Financial are cashing in. General Motors Co.’s lending unit booked a $2 billion gain last year reselling the vehicles that came back from expired leases and anything the company repossessed, according to a regulatory filing. That helped GM Financial to nearly double its annual profit to ...

  Bloomberg Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany could loosen some pandemic restrictions next week as the country’s outbreak shows signs of peaking. While contagion rates are continuing to post records on a daily basis, the pace of the increases have slowed. Meanwhile, Covid-19 cases in intensive-care facilities are less than half the level in early December. That’s prompted calls for ...

  Bloomberg Federal, state and local law-enforcement agencies across the US are bracing for the possibility of a protest by truckers that could begin this weekend and carry into March, potentially including a cross-country caravan and disruptions to cities and major transportation routes. Although it’s still not clear how serious the threat is, the US Department of Homeland Security warned ...

  Bloomberg Hungarian inflation surged to an almost 15-year high as government-imposed price caps on goods ranging from sugar to gasoline failed to rein in price growth. Consumer prices grew an annual 7.9% in January, the fastest pace since August 2007 and exceeding the 7.4% median estimate in a Bloomberg survey, the Budapest-based statistics office said in a statement. The ...

  Bloomberg Stocks extended declines on Friday along with American index futures as red-hot US inflation stoked bets on faster Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes amid febrile speculation about the monetary-policy outlook. The Stoxx Europe 600 index dropped more than 1%, with technology and real-estate shares leading the decline. Carmakers outperformed after strong results from Mercedes-Benz AG. The benchmark remains on ...

  Bloomberg Europe’s food delivery firms are finding out the hard way that investors are no longer willing to look past continual losses and rising costs. Delivery Hero SE’s shares shed close to a third of their value, or about 5.1 billion euros ($5.8 billion), in a record rout as analysts lamented elusive profitability. The bleeding continued with a further ...

  DUBAI / WAM The United Arab Emirates’ federal export credit company, Etihad Credit Insurance (ECI), hosted for the first time the Prague Club Committee (PCC) Biennial Meeting of the Berne Union, an international organisation of leading export credit and political risk insurers, in Dubai. The global event gathered delegates from PCC member countries to discuss export-oriented innovation and growth ...

  Abu Dhabi / WAM Alpha Dhabi Holding PJSC, one of the largest and fastest-growing investment holding companies in the Middle East, announced its preliminary financial results for the full year of 2021. The company reported revenues of AED18.8 billion, reflecting 400% growth compared to AED3.80 billion in 2020, while the gross profit touched AED5.1 billion in 2021 compared to ...