Bloomberg Virgin Money Holdings UK Plc, soared after receiving a 1.6 billion-pound ($2.2 billion) preliminary offer from rival CYBG Plc, as potential consolidation among smaller banks accelerates. CYBG, which lends to consumers and small-medium enterprises, is eyeing the Richard Branson-backed bank to give it greater scale, potential cost savings and access to its presence on the high street. Virgin Money’s ...

Bloomberg Qualcomm Inc. unveiled a new plan to buy back $10 billion in stock, replacing an earlier repurchase program that was almost exhausted. The San Diego-based company, the world’s largest maker of mobile-phone chips, said the plan authorized by the board has no expiration date. The previous buyback was a $15 billion program that had $1.2 billion remaining, Qualcomm said ...

Bloomberg A Swiss wealth manager embroiled in an insider-trading case linked to Air Liquide SA’s $13.2 billion takeover of Airgas Inc. has lost his bid to avoid posting bail of 1 million euros ($1.2 million). A ruling from France’s top court revealed that a man identified as Thierry Z., working for wealth-management firm Stokors SA, was charged by criminal authorities ...

The world is not ready for another financial crisis, but another financial crisis may be ready for the world. OK, the odds of this are long. Still, they’re not nonexistent. The history of modern financial crises is that, originating in obscure corners of the financial system, they are initially ignored because they seem innocuous — and then wham! Think Thailand ...

Political turmoil is rarely a good backdrop for Italian bonds. This time seems different. An auction of government debt showed investors had little inclination to demand higher borrowing costs to offset the risks around the prospect of a populist, anti-immigration government of the Five Star Movement and the League. This shows the strength of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) firepower. ...

Citigroup Inc., soon after the financial crisis, split itself into two banks — a good one and a bad one. Citi said it was going to sell the latter, which included a subprime loan portfolio and other businesses that had gotten it into trouble. But it never did. Eventually CEO Michael Corbat did away with the charade and recombined them. ...

Theresa May’s government is still promising to quit Europe’s customs union when Brexit happens next year. The prime minister’s position is politically understandable, yet entirely indefensible. And it perfectly captures the bind Britain has gotten itself into. Staying in the European Union’s customs union after Brexit, or joining some specially tailored version of it, would leave the UK with a ...

Academic macroeconomists almost never try to make forecasts about the macroeconomy. That probably sounds almost unbelievable to most people, but it’s true — look at any macro paper in a mainstream economic journal, and there’s only a very small chance that it will be about forecasting. There are one or two economists out there who are deeply interested in the ...

A year after the world economy’s synchronized boomlet was recognized, it’s time to consider what the next chapter will be in the global economic story. To many people, it feels like the good times just got going, with all the major players pulling in unison. After years of moderate, patchwork expansion from the great recession, 2017 saw just about all ...

In the decades after the Civil War, federal taxes and spending in the US were about one-sixth or one-seventh as high as they are now as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). But that doesn’t really mean government was only one-sixth or one-seventh as big as it is now. For one thing, the US government gave away hundreds of ...