Bloomberg Facebook Inc sent a clear signal with its agreement to buy a brain computing startup: heightened regulatory scrutiny and intensifying antitrust probes won’t slow down its pace of acquisitions. With its announcement of plans to purchase CTRL-Labs for at least $500 million, Facebook continued its pattern of snapping up promising startups in new markets, the very behaviour that the ...

Bloomberg Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings Plc raised $150 million in a steeply priced bond sale, responding to liquidity concerns as the luxury carmaker bets that a future SUV model will boost cash flow. The debt issue comes with a 12 percent coupon, double the cost of Aston Martin’s existing bonds. A further $100 million of notes could be available ...

Bloomberg Renault SA Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard said he would back a tie up with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV should another opportunity arise to get a deal. If the project with Fiat “were to come back under conditions that are acceptable for all, I would be delighted,” Senard told French senators at a hearing in Paris, adding that there’s nothing currently ...

Bloomberg Bain Capital and Advent International are preparing a fresh bid for German lighting maker Osram Licht AG, ratcheting up a bidding war with Austrian sensor maker AMS AG, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The two buyout firms planneed to announce their intention to submit a new proposal as soon as Wednesday, with a formal bid coming ...

Bloomberg Contract workers for Google in Pittsburgh voted to join the United Steelworkers, according to the union. The result was 49 votes for and 24 against, said Maria Somma, the organising director for the union. This is one of the first victories for organised labour since waves of employee activism began consuming the technology giant last year. The union hopes ...

If ever there was a case of political miscalculation, it’s the collapsing relationship between President Trump and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Jerome (‘Jay’) Powell. Trump seems to have believed that he could easily manipulate Powell into embracing an aggressively easy monetary policy whose main objective was Trump’s re-election. For his part, Powell seems to have believed that, ...

So divergent have their fortunes been since the financial crisis, European banks tend to trail their Wall Street peers on most of the metrics investors care about. Gender diversity at the top might be the next lagging indicator. There are rare bright spots in Europe. Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc promoted Alison Rose to chief executive officer, the first ...

It has been a busy month at Walmart Inc. First, America’s largest retailer said it would stop sales of some kinds of ammunition in the wake of a shooting at one of its stores in El Paso, Texas. Then the company said it would cease selling e-cigarettes as a mysterious lung illness has raised new concerns about the safety of ...

The Luxembourg court decisions on Starbucks Corp.’s antitrust tax case – which was a loss for the European Union — and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV’s – which was a win – offer important clues to how a much bigger tax showdown between Brussels and Apple Inc. might play out. While there’s something for critics and defenders of the EU 50-50 ...

India is making a second big fiscal gamble. The first – a switch from sales to consumption taxes – has failed to achieve revenue targets. The government, which two months ago was trying in desperation to tax everything that moved, has suddenly changed tack and is slashing levies on company profits. Will this revive animal spirits and sputtering GDP growth, ...