Walmart Inc. might want to portray its $16 billion purchase of India’s largest e-commerce firm, Flipkart Group, as a brilliant strategic move, long-planned in secret, that would allow the US retail giant to manage the transition away from big-box stores globally. Yet, the truth is that the deal represents a second-best outcome — if that — for Walmart as well ...

Many companies would shy from being lumped alongside indebted Chinese investment groups such as Fosun International Ltd. and HNA Group Co. It’s a comparison that Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. should welcome. Masayoshi Son’s company is trying to shed its image as a telecom operator. SoftBank’s US carrier Sprint Corp. has agreed to merge with competitor T-Mobile US Inc., leaving the ...

Millions of people received an email from Twitter last week advising them to change their password. Apparently a bug allowed some employees inside the company to see users’ passwords in plain text, creating the possibility that private information could be compromised. I received this email, read it and promptly deleted it. I forgot all about it until the subject came ...

Bloomberg Mark Carney’s window to raise interest rates before Brexit is closing. As Britain draws nearer to its divorce from the European Union at the end of March with little certainty as to the economic repercussions, Bank of England policy makers with a benchmark interest rate of just 0.5 percent could be left with limited room to cut should they ...

Bloomberg Wells Fargo & Co. must pay $97 million to home mortgage consultants and private mortgage bankers in California who didn’t get the breaks they were entitled to under the state’s stringent labor laws. A federal judge in Los Angeles agreed with the bankers and consultants that the money they were entitled to should be based not just on their ...

Bloomberg New Zealand’s central bank held interest rates at a record low and left the door open to a cut as inflation remains subdued. Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr kept the official cash rate at 1.75 percent and said it would remain there “for some time to come.” The RBNZ pushed out its forecast for the first OCR increase to ...

Bloomberg Bank of Japan board members discussed the need for policy sustainability and strengthened commitment to reaching its 2 percent inflation goal during its April 26-27 policy meeting, when it removed language about when it expected to hit that target. A summary of opinions from that meeting indicate that the BOJ looks set to continue on its current course following ...

Bloomberg The gossip inside the Beverly Hills Hilton kept taking an unexpected turn — towards, of all things, Deutsche Bank AG. In chandeliered conference rooms and marble-floored hallways, Wall Street A-listers chatted, with no shortage of schadenfreude, about the German bank’s recent capitulation: After two decades trying to build one of the world’s top investment banks, it’s settling for something ...

Bloomberg The Dutch arm of Air France-KLM Group is seeking a change in the beleaguered carrier’s management structure in a bid to gain more influence after a protracted French labor conflict led the company’s chief executive officer to resign, according to a person familiar with the matter. KLM is growing increasingly frustrated with mounting losses from strikes at the Air ...

Bloomberg Tiger Global Management is purring all the way to the bank after Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart deal. The firm has made about $3 billion after investing $1 billion in Flipkart Group, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named. Walmart will acquire a majority stake in India’s biggest online retailer, the companies said. For ...