Bloomberg China’s mounting pile of distressed debt has elevated market players’ attention to one of the nation’s less obvious economic data points: the producer-price index (PPI). With many of the debtors that ran into trouble in the past year coming from the industrial world, gauges of manufacturing strain are particularly important. Some analysts point to the PPI as a forward ...

Bloomberg The lower chamber of the Japanese parliament early on Saturday approved the government’s record $907 billion initial budget bill for the fiscal year starting April 1. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner Komeito held a vote on the bill, clearing the way for its passage by the chamber to ensure it can be enacted ...

Bloomberg Inflation in Indonesia eased to a near-decade low, boosting odds that the next interest rate move by policy makers in Southeast Asia’s biggest economy could be down. Consumer prices rose 2.57 percent in February compared to a year earlier, the lowest since November 2009, according to figures released by the statistics office in Jakarta. That was lower than the ...

Bloomberg Tata Group is exploring strategic options for its Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc unit including a potential stake sale in the struggling luxury carmaker, people familiar with the matter said. India’s biggest conglomerate is considering alternatives ranging from a minority stake sale to finding a venture partner that would jointly develop vehicles and lower costs, said the people, who ...

Bloomberg Malaysia plans to halt all expansion of oil palm plantations this year as it seeks to dispel the oil’s reputation as a driver of deforestation. The world’s second-largest producer will cap the area at around 6 million hectares, Minister of Primary Industries Teresa Kok said in an interview. That’s up from 5.85 million hectares at the end of last ...

Bloomberg Donald Trump might have to drop tariffs on steel and aluminum if he wants his new North American trade deal to see the light of day. US lawmakers and business groups are joining Canada and Mexico in pushing the president to lift the so-called Section 232 levies on those nations as, essentially, a condition of enacting the trade deal ...

Bloomberg Richard Plepler and David Levy, two of the most powerful executives in US media, are leaving their posts at WarnerMedia as new boss AT&T Inc. overhauls the entertainment business it bought last year. Plepler, who helped create some of TV’s most memorable programs over three decades at HBO, said he plans to step down as chief executive officer of ...

Bloomberg The US economy was steadier than thought at the end of last year, but it’s probably too soon to give it a clean bill of health for 2019. That’s the main takeaway from the shutdown-delayed report on fourth-quarter gross domestic product, which cooled by less than expected to a 2.6 percent annualized gain thanks to surprisingly robust business investment ...

Bloomberg BlueMountain Capital Management LLC has found a potent ally in its fight to overhaul leadership of bankrupt utility giant PG&E Corp: activist investor ValueAct Capital Management. BlueMountain, a PG&E shareholder that pushed to keep PG&E out of bankruptcy, launched a proxy fight to replace its board in the days prior to the company’s Chapter 11 filing in January and ...

Bloomberg Daimler AG and BMW AG have agreed to cooperate on developing self-driving cars, the latest move by the luxury-car rivals to share cost as a technology shift shakes up the industry. The German manufacturers have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop the next generation of autonomous-driving technology, which should be market-ready by the middle of the next ...