Bloomberg Kazakhstan began a new political era, at least formally, as Kassym-Jomart Tokayev was sworn in as president on Wednesday, succeeding leader-for-life Nursultan Nazarbayev. One of his first acts was to move Nazarbayev’s daughter into contention as a successor. The Kazakh Senate unanimously elected Dariga Nazarbayeva as the body’s new chairwoman, putting her formally in the line of succession to ...

Bloomberg Britain’s messy divorce from the European Union is once again stuck between the demands of Theresa May’s divided government and the reality of what the bloc is willing to offer her — this time over how long the delay to Brexit should be. With just nine days left until the UK is due to exit the EU, the prime ...

Bloomberg Algeria’s ruling party on Wednesday voiced support for protesters demanding the country’s embattled president step down, in the latest signal of growing rifts within the ruling powers. In comments carried by Algerian television, National Liberation Front chief Moued Bouchareb said Abdelaziz Bouteflika “understood the popular protests and its demands.” A statement issued by the party’s brass after a testy ...

The US-led campaign against Huawei Technologies Co., China’s telecom giant, has attracted a lot of attention for the indictment of the company’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou. Last week, Huawei’s lawyers pleaded not guilty in a New York federal court to 13 counts of fraud involving an elaborate scheme to violate US sanctions against Iran. That case is no doubt ...

Haruhiko Kuroda is miles from where he wants to be. About 200 miles. That’s the distance from Tokyo to Nagoya, where the Bank of Japan governor gave a very upbeat speech last year. Some interpreted those remarks as laying the groundwork for a shift from the ultra-accommodation that’s been the central bank’s trademark. In terms of monetary policy, Nagoya might ...

Every deal in the payments business looks expensive – until the next one comes along. Fidelity National Information Services Inc. (FIS) is paying a heady $34 billion plus for Worldpay Inc. not much more than a year after the rival payments processing company bulked up with an expensive takeover of its own. The logic of the combination is simply greater scale ...

Germany has come up with a solution to the deep troubles at one of the world’s largest banks: make it part of an even bigger one. The people who oversee Europe’s financial system had better be ready for the consequences if this doesn’t end well. The Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank is in talks to merge with crosstown rival Commerzbank — a ...

Several theories explain why India’s new central bank governor took his boldest step yet. Little attention has been paid to the consequences. Last week, Governor Shaktikanta Das made an unexpected tweak to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) traditional management of longer-term liquidity in the banking system: by buying and selling government bonds. India’s currency, sovereign-debt and credit markets were ...

China’s banks may have a flood of bad loans waiting in the wings. Not that you’d know it from looking at official levels for 2018, which suggest the problem was broadly contained. The reality is that newly soured debt was coming through the front door as fast as banks could shovel it out the back. Authorities worked hard to restrain ...

When Facebook went down for hours this week, the internet was all atwitter (sorry). Most of what I came across was fairly snarky, but a lot of the posts were pretty clever. I saw a variation of this retweeted many times: “News flash! Facebook down! People talk to each other, kids play with toys!” (Actually, they were probably playing Fortnite ...