What could the European Central Bank (ECB) realistically do to help Italy, even if it were so minded? Not much, is the depressing answer – in specific new aid anyway. That’s unless Italy ends up getting itself in such a mess that it’s forced to hand over financial control and enter into another ECB bailout program. We’re nowhere near that ...

Bloomberg US stock futures turned lower and shares dropped in Europe and most of Asia on Monday as investors struggled to drum up any optimism after a roller coaster few weeks. The dollar rose, oil halted a 10-day sell-off and the pound slid as the UK’s premier fought to save her Brexit divorce plan. Futures on S&P 500, Dow and ...

Bloomberg Indian equities dropped, reversing earlier gains, as a plan by major oil producers to cut supply to boost the fuel’s price weighed on sentiment. The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex Index dropped 0.7 percent to 34,919.97 in Mumbai, after capping its first consecutive weekly gains in two months. Twenty-five of the 31 Sensex members fell on Monday, paced by a ...

Bloomberg SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son is seeking to raise 2.4 trillion yen ($21.1 billion) in an initial public offering of his Japanese telecom business that could be the country’s largest IPO yet. The Japanese technology giant said in a prospectus it will sell 1.6 billion shares at 1,500 yen apiece in a new entity, SoftBank Corp., that will ...

Bloomberg Bharti Airtel Ltd.’s dollar-denominated bonds due in 2023 surged the most in five years after the company offered to buy back the securities at above the market price amid the risk of a rating downgrade. India’s second-biggest mobile phone carrier will pay $985 per $1,000 principal amount plus accrued interest for any or all of the $1.5 billion of ...

Bloomberg As Jack Ma prepares to step down as chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., he does so after the online sales promotion he has championed for a decade notched another record. In its 10th iteration, the annual Singles’ Day event on November 11 notched 213.5 billion yuan ($30.7 billion) in merchandise sales, an increase of 27 percent, according to ...

Bloomberg Netflix Inc. said it will test a lower-priced version of its film and television streaming service in some markets to boost sales. The company hasn’t committed to lowering prices anywhere, but does want to experiment, Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings said. He didn’t say when or where the test would be conducted. A lower-priced offering would be a departure ...

Bloomberg SAP SE is making its largest acquisition yet as it battles startups including Salesforce.com Inc in selling software to clients that want to better understand their customers. The $8 billion purchase of Qualtrics International Inc., whose software gathers and analyses data, is meant to strengthen SAP’s offering in the customer relations management sector. That’s a field Europe’s biggest software ...

Bloomberg They’re getting a divorce but for currency traders, they’re almost as close as ever. Britain’s torturous settlement bid with the European Union has pushed the pound and euro in sync against the dollar as investors price risks on both sides of the Channel. The 40-day correlation between the two currency pairs has climbed back towards 0.80 and is nearing ...

Bloomberg General Electric Co. plunged towards its recession-era low and the company’s bonds fell sharply after an influential analyst slashed his price target. JPMorgan Chase & Co. analyst Steve Tusa cut his view on the shares 40 percent to $6, the lowest on Wall Street, citing rising liabilities, a weakening cash-flow outlook and poor third-quarter results on “almost all fronts.” ...