Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s competition commissioner challenging tech giants on several fronts, has opened another: “big data.” In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, she singles out data as an important competitive advantage that should be more seriously considered in antitrust reviews and investigations. Buying the mostly groundless big data hype is, unfortunately, often the flip side of ...

To understand why China is cracking down on power use by bitcoin miners, have a look at curtailment. The practice—where producers of wind and solar power cease generation because the entire electricity system is oversupplied—has been a major problem for the country in recent years. In the northwestern provinces of Xinjiang and Gansu, as much as one-third of wind generation ...

Demand is surging again for oil, minerals and grains — the basic goods to which Latin America’s fortunes have long been tethered. After a year of graft scandals and political whiplash, you can just about hear the sighs of collective relief. Or is that just a giant sucking sound? Since the voyages of discovery, raw materials and farm goods have ...

Bloomberg European Central Bank policy makers who marked the turn of the year by pushing for an end to crisis-era stimulus measures just got a reminder that they’ll have to wait a while longer for price pressures to pick up. Despite solid economic growth, euro-area inflation slowed to 1.4 percent last month from 1.5 percent, and the underlying rate unexpectedly ...

Bloomberg All but one of Canada’s six biggest commercial lenders now say the central bank will raise interest rates this month after the jobless rate dropped to its lowest in modern records. Toronto-Dominion Bank, Ba-nk of Nova Scotia, Royal Bank of Canada and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce changed their forecasts after a Statistics Canada report showed the unemployment ...

Bloomberg Deutsche Bank AG’s sustained trading slump is increasing pressure on Chief Executive Officer John Cryan to prove he can win back investment-banking market share. Revenue at the securities unit slumped about 22 percent in the final quarter because of persistent low volatility in markets and muted client activity, the bank said in a statement. Analysts had expected trading revenue ...

Bloomberg While the Bank of Japan resolutely maintains its 2 percent inflation target, Credit Suisse Group AG says that’s an unrealistic goal. The Japanese economy is enjoying a cyclical recovery, benefiting from a pick up in global demand, but nothing suggests structural change, said Hiromichi Shirakawa, chief Japan economist at Credit Suisse and a former BOJ official. “It’s difficult for ...

Bloomberg India took another step towards cleaning up a banking system riddled with bad loans, with the government seeking parliamentary approval to issue about 800 billion rupees ($12.6 billion) of bonds to fund capital injections into state lenders. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration expe-cts to sell the first of its recapitalisation bonds before the fiscal year ends March 31, as ...

Bloomberg Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion tax overhaul may spur investment and US economic growth, though policy makers can “wait and see” if that warrants higher interest rates because inflation is low. “There is some possibility this could light a fire under investment and really drive growth higher,” Bullard, a ...

Bloomberg Steinhoff International Holdings NV, the South African retailer laid low by an accounting scandal, is selling one of its more high-flying assets as it seeks liquidity to keep itself alive. The owner of UK discounter Poundland and bedding supplier Mattress Firm in the US is in discussions with a potential buyer of a 2006 Gulfstream G550 private jet that’s ...