Bloomberg The euro area’s services sector expanded at a faster pace than initially estimated in June, as the industry drove a pick-up in the bloc’s growth momentum. A purchasing managers’ index for the region climbed to 55.2 last month, higher than an earlier flash estimate of 55 and up from 53.8 in May, IHS Markit said on Wednesday. The survey ...

Bloomberg It’s no secret that Google is set for another round of hefty antitrust fines. The decision could come as soon as July 18, judging by the gaping hole in the European Commission’s calendar the week after US President Donald Trump visits Brussels. But while the size of the penalty will grab the headlines — after last year’s record 2.4 ...

If Donald Trump had his way, the US wouldn’t import any German cars at all. “Build them here!” he barked in a recent tweet threatening 20 percent tariffs on European automakers. No matter that the Germans have invested billions of dollars in US plants and their employees build hundreds of thousands of cars in the country annually, many of them ...

Global worries over trade wars, central bank rate hikes and geopolitical instability have hammered emerging-market debt in recent months. The fact is, over the past decade, many developing and low-income countries have simply borrowed too much. They borrowed from the markets, from banks and from other countries. In particular, they borrowed from China, which has averaged more than $100 billion ...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has proved once again she is the ultimate political survivor. As the immediate threat of a collapse of her government coalition passes, so does one source of some of downward pressure on the euro. That pressure has been pretty substantial over the past two months, and the blowup in Italian politics in mid-April was just a ...

So much for the trade war apocalypse. While many headlines feature gloom about the precarious state of relations between the US and its economic partners, Japan’s most widely watched indicator has some sunny patches worthy of attention. Japanese companies plan a surge in capital spending in the year through March 2019, according to the central bank’s quarterly Tankan survey released ...

It’s time for investors to stop fighting the last war. The next downturn most likely won’t be triggered by another meltdown of the financial system. The Federal Reserve has concluded its stress test of big banks, a look into whether they have enough money set aside to withstand another 2008-type financial crisis. The Fed announced that all 35 banks examined ...

Specialty apparel and department store stocks have been battered in recent years as a steady stream of store closings and unenticing merchandise put their future in doubt. But the apparel and accessories business is suddenly looking more fashionable. Last week, Goldman Sachs analyst Alexandra Walvis initiated coverage of Tapestry Inc., Tiffany & Co. and VF Corp. with a buy rating. ...

John Legere is the pitchman T-Mobile US Inc. and Sprint Corp. need for their merger. Can he pull it off? The cheerleader-like qualities that have helped the CEO bring enthusiasm to T-Mobile are the same ones that induce groans. Testifying before the Senate judiciary subcommittee on antitrust June 27, Legere wore his usual uniform: a superhero-esque magenta T-Mobile t-shirt under ...

Bloomberg European stocks struggled for direction while futures for the S&P 500 advanced in a lackluster session overshadowed by the US holiday. There was a more downbeat mood in Asia where shares slipped even as the yuan extended a rebound. Telecom companies were the biggest winners on the Stoxx Europe 600 Index, though declines in technology shares helped offset the ...