Bloomberg Hammerson Plc withdrew its 3.2 billion-pound ($4.6 billion) offer to buy Intu Properties Plc after a growing number of its shareholders opposed a deal that would have created the UK’s biggest shopping-mall owner. Hammerson’s initial all-share offer had come as mall owners try to combine to cut costs and focus on premium properties while UK consumers endure a year-long ...

Bloomberg After US sanctions crippled an entire Russian industry and air strikes in Syria threatened the first direct clash between nuclear superpowers since the Cold War, Vladimir Putin is seeking to dial down the tension. Russia’s leader wants to give President Donald Trump another chance to make good on pledges to improve ties and avoid escalation, according to four people ...

Bloomberg British PM Theresa May’s plans for Brexit face another potential legal hurdle as the country’s highest court rules on whether some powers from the European Union that are due to return to the UK should go to the administrations in Scotland and Wales. Months of wrangling with the semi-autonomous governments about whether policies ranging from environmental protection to agriculture ...

Bloomberg CIA Director Mike Pompeo travelled to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong Un in advance of a possible summit on denuclearisation, President Donald Trump said. “Meeting went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed,” Trump said in a Twitter posting Wednesday morning. “Details of Summit are being worked out now. Denuclearisation will be a great thing for ...

Bloomberg Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s former prime minister, left for London ahead of a looming verdict on corruption charges he and his daughter Maryam face amid mounting signs of a military-led clamp down on the media. Maryam said they will visit her mother who is undergoing cancer treatment in the UK capital, posting pictures on Twitter of her father sitting in ...

Bloomberg African troops battling an al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia for the past decade stand little chance of withdrawing by their deadline in two years as the government remains fragile and a spike in militant violence has drawn in US forces. The longest-running African Union peacekeeping mission, known as Amisom, operates in a shattered country whose lawlessness has bred regional violence ...

Bloomberg Barbara Bush, the wife of one US president and mother of another who embodied the old-fashioned sensibility that family comes before careers or politics, has died. She was 92. She died on April 17, according to a statement from family spokesman Jim McGrath. No cause was given. Bush, who was in “failing health,” decided to no longer seek medical ...

Bloomberg India’s cash machines are running dry, leaving policy makers and bankers scrambling to assuage the public and prevent perception about the nation’s fraud-hit financial system from worsening. As the banknote shortage spread across several states, the government finally addressed the issue in a statement, where it cited an “unusual spurt in demand” for cash. The Finance Ministry rolled out ...

Bloomberg Germany’s public-sector workers and employers have agreed on a three-step series of wage hikes, providing the European Central Bank with fresh evidence of inflation-boosting pay deals and averting the threat of more disruptive strikes. Wages for 2.3 million workers in federal and local governments will rise by an annual 3.19 percent on average retroactive to March, by another 3.09 ...

Bloomberg Investors are losing faith in the Bank of England delivering two interest-rate increases this year as UK economic data does little to suggest a full-blown tightening cycle is needed. While a hike in May is still almost fully priced in by markets, the chances of a second in 2018 fell further on Wednesday after inflation slowed to the weakest ...