Bloomberg Nexi SpA shares fell in Milan trading after the initial public offering of the payments-service company raised 2.01 billion euros ($2.27 billion), making it the biggest listing in Europe so far this year. Nexi declined 5.5 percent to 8.50 euros. A mix of existing and new shares in the Milan-based company were sold to more than 340 investors from ...

Bloomberg Poland plans to overhaul its pension system in a way that ends uncertainty over the future of assets managed by privately-held pension funds and helps the government avoid widening the budget deficit. Polish stocks fell and government bonds rose. The government proposed transferring all of the 162 billion zloty ($43 billion) of assets in the privately-managed part of the ...

Bloomberg Investor confidence in Germany’s growth outlook improved for the sixth consecutive month, underpinning hope for an economic rebound later this year. A gauge measuring prospects for the next half year rose to 3.1 in April, beating an estimate for a gain to 0.5. The positive reading means optimists are outnumbering pessimists among survey participants for the first time since ...

Bloomberg And then there were two. Hulu LLC, an online-streaming venture backed by the biggest companies in entertainment, bought out AT&T Inc.’s 9.5 percent stake in a deal worth about $1.43 billion. The accord, which values the whole entity at $15 billion, leaves the business with just a pair of owners: Walt Disney Co., which has majority control, and Comcast ...

Bloomberg Investors scouting for the best way to trade the Brexit delay should just look across the UK border — at Ireland’s bonds. The securities are seen as offering the right mix of safety and returns as the deferral of Britain’s exit from the European Union dispels anxiety over the most contentious Brexit issue — that of the Irish border. ...

Is Julian Assange a journalist? The Justice Department sidestepped that question in its indictment of Assange. But his case is still certain to stir a debate about whether the WikiLeaks founder deserves protection under the First Amendment. Assange was arrested in London on April 11, as US prosecutors unsealed an indictment accusing him of conspiring with Chelsea Manning to hack ...

The difference between tech insiders and the hoi polloi is that the tech insiders make their real money long before a company goes public. This is especially true of the so-called unicorns — those tech companies with pre-IPO valuations of $1 billion or more. The insiders invest when the company is still in its early stages, while it’s raising money ...

Ten thousand here, another couple thousand there. Lately, dramatic job cuts seem to be par for the course at the world’s banks. Even by those standards, though, Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s plan to trim 10,000 to 12,000 jobs is eye-popping. The lender is “secretly” preparing to cut a quarter of its workforce in coming years, and shutter up to a ...

TThe global economic development initiative that China calls “One Belt, One Road” is considered one of Beijing’s major instruments in its geopolitical conflict with the US. But it’s unlikely to do much to boost Chinese power as it helps most of the world. China is investing in fixed assets and infrastructure from southeast Asia to the Balkans and East Africa. ...

After almost three years of wrangling and gridlock following the 2016 European Union (EU) referendum, more than half of British voters say they long for a strong leader. It’s not an unreasonable demand in the current bleak situation. The 2019 “Audit of Political Engagement” by the Hansard Society (a group co-led by the speakers of the two houses of the ...