Bloomberg Call it the Masayoshi Son mathematical distortion field. The founder of SoftBank Group Corp. added about 1.94 trillion yen ($17.6 billion) to the market value of his company— by unveiling a plan to buy back shares worth less than a third of that amount. Based on his own stake, Son’s net worth rose by about $5 billion. His fortune ...

Bloomberg The Philippine Congress approved the 3.76 trillion-peso ($72 billion) budget for 2019, ending an impasse that put on hold funding for new government projects. Lawmakers ratified the spending plan in Manila, just before a three-month recess until May 20. The Philippines missed the year-end deadline to approve the 2019 budget — the first time in almost a decade — ...

Bloomberg Lenders dumped shares of Anil Ambani group companies they held as collateral after their market value plummeted about 126 billion rupees ($1.8 billion) this month, adding to the litany of woes plaguing the Indian billionaire. Creditors sold a total 5.5 billion shares in four companies — Reliance Power Ltd., Reliance Infrastructure Ltd., Reliance Communications Ltd. and Reliance Capital Ltd. ...

Bloomberg Sony Corp. is buying back as much as 100 billion yen ($910 million) of its own shares, the electronics maker’s first-ever large scale repurchase. The shares rose as much as 4.8 percent in early trading in Tokyo after announcing the buyback, which will start on Tuesday and last through March 22. This is the first share repurchase aimed at ...

Bloomberg The China slowdown sending tremors through the business world has resulted in the biggest record loss in India’s corporate history. Tata Motors Ltd. shares had their biggest drop in 26 years in Mumbai trading after the company unveiled a writedown in its luxury Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc unit. The decline of as much as 30 percent was the ...

Bloomberg India’s biggest foreign-owned money manager expects the nation’s economic growth and company earnings to be insulated from national elections even as stock market volatility increases in the run-up to voting. “Elections can only boost or dampen sentiment depending on the news flow, but they won’t massively impact the underlying earnings and economic growth of India,” said Anand Radhakrishnan, chief ...

Iraqi President Barham Salih measured his words in a telephone interview from Baghdad. He didn’t want to worsen a quarrel with President Trump over US access to an air base in western Iraq. But Iraqi politics is fragile, and ill-considered statements by American presidents can have big consequences. “I appreciate what the US has done to help Iraq,” Salih told ...

Call it beginner’s luck. India’s interest-rate cut, a surprise to most economists, was justified: Inflation is well below target and growth is slowing across all major economies. In that regard, the South Asian country is firmly in the mainstream. Where India isn’t in the mainstream is in the inability of a nominally pro-business government to hang on to a central ...

Europe’s tour operators are on a holiday from hell. TUI AG, which until now has defied the downturn in the region’s travel market, cautioned on earnings. Then Thomas Cook Group Plc, which delivered a nasty profit warning in November, said it was “reviewing” its airline business. These two mainstays for Europe’s holidaymakers have been hit by a triple-whammy. First, last ...

China is ‘half of everything,’ such as aluminum, steel and copper consumption. For the electric vehicle (EV) sector, China is at least half of everything, if not far more, in three key areas: It represents 76 percent of all commissioned lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity; logged 60 percent of global EV sales in fourth-quarter 2018; and held 50 percent of global public ...