Bloomberg Octopus Energy, the UK green power provider, bought US startup Evolve Energy as part of a $100 million push into the American market. The company hopes to attract millions of customers as it gets a foothold in the Texas market. It’s the latest step in Octopus’s plan to expand globally, driving down consumer prices with low-cost renewable power. Evolve ...

Bloomberg Royal Dutch Shell Plc will cut as many as 9,000 jobs as crude’s crash forces billions of dollars in cost savings and the oil and gas giant overhauls its business to embrace clean energy. The move reflects the challenge facing Big Oil as the virus pandemic persists, with some in the industry believing the era of demand growth is ...

Some political debates have highlights. The first presidential debate this year had only lowlights. Joe Biden called President Donald Trump “a clown.” Trump said Biden wasn’t smart. Biden said Trump “has been a fool.” And on it went, in what must have been the nastiest presidential debate in US history. The most common word in the transcript will be “[crosstalk].” ...

There has always been a paradox at the heart of Uber Technologies Inc’s business model. The ride-hailing firm aimed to attract users with prices that undercut the traditional taxi industry, thereby squeezing out the competition. With a monopoly, it would be able to raise its fares and turn a profit. But higher fares then risk irritating the customers it wooed ...

The history of epidemics is rife with examples of society rebelling against tough public-health edicts, such as the breach of plague quarantine in 18th-century Marseille or protests against face masks during the 1918 influenza pandemic. The grim consequence is a fresh wave of deadly infections. Covid-19’s million deaths may pale in comparison to the estimated 50 million lives lost in ...

Joe Biden’s official statement on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett mentions her name once. It mentions Roe v Wade once. It has eight sentences alluding to the court’s pending case on the Affordable Care Act. The fate of Obamacare is the issue that Biden, and other Democrats, think gives them their best political opportunity during Barrett’s ...

Bloomberg China Evergrande Group’s stock and local bonds soared after the developer took a major step towards avoiding a cash crunch that had threatened to roil the nation’s $50 trillion financial system and reverberate across global markets. After a turbulent few days during which banks, bondholders and senior government officials became increasingly alarmed about Evergrande’s financial health, the world’s most ...

Bloomberg General Atlantic will invest 36.8 billion rupees ($498 million) in billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s retail venture as Asia’s richest man continues to garner funds after securing more than $20 billion for his digital services unit earlier this year. The private equity firm will hold a 0.84% stake in Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd, according to an exchange filing on Wednesday, giving ...

Bloomberg Women in India spend about five hours a day on unpaid domestic work, or thrice as much time as men, according to a new survey by the government. Only about 18% of women participated in employment and related activities in a day, against 57% of men, according to the findings of the first Time-Use survey by the Ministry of ...

Bloomberg Hong Kong retailers’ struggles eased slightly in August even as social-distancing measures were extended to combat the latest wave of coronavirus infections in the city. Retail sales by value fell 13.1% from a year earlier to HK$25.6 billion ($3.3 billion), according to a government statement. That’s better than the median forecast for a 17.5% decline in the period, according ...