It’s not quite a stitch-up — you’d need the state to be a big shareholder for that to apply. But the $4 billion takeover of tech consultancy Altran Technologies SA by domestic peer Capgemini SE looks like an attempt to build a French champion without giving the target’s shareholders a good price. With activist-in-chief Elliott Management Corp. siding with minority ...

Jack Ma is riding high. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the company he founded, has won approval to forge ahead with a Hong Kong share sale that could raise at least $10 billion. On November 11, China’s largest e-commerce company logged more than $38.3 billion of purchases during its annual Singles’ Day shopping event, a new record. The rest of China’s ...

The island of Tsushima, halfway between Japan and South Korea, is about as close as you can get to the frontline of their trade war. Now part of Nagasaki prefecture, waves of Korean cultural, commercial and military influence have crested and receded over the hills of this verdant island since the Middle Ages. Here it’s apparent that centuries-old ties between ...

When times are good, focus on the top line and the bottom line will look after itself. When times are bad, you should do the reverse. That looks a lot like the strategy the world’s biggest miner, BHP Group, has followed over the years in appointing its chief executive officers. The question the resources sector should ask in looking at ...

New research from the Federal Reserve’s own economists reveal that estimates of the neutral real rate of interest are well below those of policy makers. The low estimates have important implications for policy makers and market participants, suggesting the Fed may still have some hawkish expectations of what can be accomplished in the future despite its dovish turn this year. ...

For Kumar Mangalam Birla’s textile-to-telecom empire, adversity is a 100-year-old companion. In 1919, when the Indian businessman’s great-grandfather wanted to start a jute mill, the dominant British firm, Andrew Yule & Co., bought all the surrounding Calcutta land. The Imperial Bank, the forerunner of today’s State Bank of India, initially refused Birla a loan. The government of post-independence India stymied ...

Bloomberg Motorola is rebooting the iconic Razr flip phone as a 6.2-inch smartphone with a foldable display that gives the Lenovo-owned brand a unique selling point against Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co’s finest. The new device reprises the Motorola Razr name and looks like a modernised version of the original. It costs $1,499 and will be available for pre-order ...

Bloomberg Apple Inc introduced its first major update to the MacBook Pro laptop in three years, adding a slightly larger screen to the top-end model, improved speakers, a better keyboard, and faster processors from Intel Corp. The new computer has a 16-inch screen, bigger than the 15.4-inch screen on the previous version. That alone may not be enough to spur ...

Bloomberg Vietnam will inspect all phones imported from China, such as Huawei and Xiaomi models, the Tuoi Tre newspaper reports citing Nguyen Hung Anh, head of Vietnam Customs’ anti-smuggling and investigation department. At issue is whether the Chinese-made phones come with preinstalled navigation apps that use maps reflecting Chinese territorial claims rejected by Hanoi, such as the expansive nine-dash line ...

Bloomberg Burberry Group Plc is teaming up with Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd to experiment with blending retail and social media in the key luxury market. The first step in the Tencent alliance will be a Burberry store in Shenzhen powered by the operator of social network WeChat. The space will offer “unique experiences that connect luxury customers’ social ...