Bloomberg UK retail sales unexpectedly increased for a third consecutive month in March, underlying the resilience of consumers in the face of Brexit uncertainty. The volume of goods sold in stores and online jumped 1.1 percent from February, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. Sales excluding auto fuel increased 1.2 percent. Both measures had been expected to show a ...

Bloomberg US aviation accident investigators have opened a probe into how an American Airlines plane struck a runway sign while taking off from New York’s John F. Kennedy International airport, forcing the plane back to the airport where it landed safely. The plane, an Airbus SE A321 headed for Los Angeles carrying 102 passengers and eight crew members, hit the ...

Bloomberg In a rare retreat for Amazon.com Inc, the e-commerce giant plans to shut down its Chinese marketplace business in July as it shifts its focus to offering mainland consumers overseas products rather than goods from local sellers. Amazon will keep running its other businesses in China, including Amazon Web Services, Kindle e-books, and cross-border operations that help ship goods ...

Bloomberg President Donald Trump’s bid to dump a glut of liquefied natural gas (LNG) on Europe is getting an unlikely boost: stringent regulations on shipping emissions that are prompting the continent’s shipyards to hunt for alternatives to high-polluting diesel. The International Maritime Organization will clamp down next year on sulfur and carbon emissions from diesel-powered ships. That’s sparked a hunt ...

Bloomberg Europe’s consumer-goods giants are showing new signs of life by selling more food and cleaning supplies, even at higher prices. Nestle SA and Unilever surprised investors with strong starts to the year, reporting first-quarter sales growth that handily topped analysts’ estimates. The Swiss maker of KitKat bars and the Anglo-Dutch owner of Dove soap each cited a combination of ...

Bloomberg Pinterest Inc.’s message to investors was don’t compare us to social media or a search engine. The outcome was that it raised about $1.4 billion in an above-range initial public offering. Pinterest operates in a crowded digital marketing space, where Google and Facebook Inc. get the lion’s share of ad dollars, and a smattering of smaller platforms like Twitter ...

Bloomberg UK house prices stagnated in March as the number of transactions plunged, according to LSL Acadata. Values were flat on an annual basis last month as falls in London and southern England offset gains elsewhere, the firm said in a report. In March alone, prices rose just 0.1 percent, and transactions fell a seasonally-adjusted 15 percent, despite the month ...

Bloomberg US new-home construction unexpectedly fell in March, decelerating to the slowest pace since May 2017 and suggesting builders remain wary even as lower mortgage rates and steady wage gains offer support to consumers. Residential starts fell 0.3 percent to a 1.139 million annualised rate after a downwardly revised 1.142 million pace in the prior month, according to government figures ...

In the rebalancing of Sino-American relations that’s underway, the usual roles are reversed: China’s normally deft President Xi Jinping appears to have badly overreached in seeking advantage. And President Trump, who often seems tone-deaf on foreign policy, is riding a bipartisan consensus that it’s time to push back against Beijing. The two nations will probably make a trade deal soon, ...

Whisper it quietly, but the worst may be over for the euro zone economy. After months of gloom, and with analysts wondering whether Europe was heading for a recession, the industrial sector shows signs of stabilising. The slight revival will please the European Central Bank (ECB), which is considering whether to double down on its monetary easing as it struggles ...