Bloomberg UK factory production reached a two-decade high last quarter as optimism about export orders swelled to the highest since the 1970s. A Confederation of British Industry survey showed the volume of output rapidly grew in the three months to July, with the CBI index reaching its strongest reading since 1995. Factories are “upbeat in their expectations for overall demand ...

Bloomberg General Motors Co.’s strategy of shunning discounted sales to rental-car companies to focus on more profitable deliveries of pickups and SUVs to U.S. consumers is boosting its bottom line. Adjusted earnings of $1.89 per share in the three months ended in June beat analyst estimates of $1.70 a share. The largest U.S. automaker sold a richer mix of sport ...

Bloomberg Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. agreed to buy Jimmy Choo Plc for about 896 million pounds ($1.2 billion), as the maker of handbags popular with the commuter set seeks to restore lost luster. The purchase of Jimmy Choo, Michael Kors’ first deal to expand beyond its own brand name since its initial public offering in 2011, gives the New York ...

Bloomberg India’s ambitious ‘Housing for All’ plan is bumping up against some harsh realities. Prime Minister Narendra Modi set a target in 2015 of building 50 million homes in less than a decade, or about seven million a year. The nation has since added only 180,877 under the scheme, underscoring the challenge in achieving that target. “It was a moon ...

Bloomberg Economists raised their forecasts for China’s economic output after growth in the first half beat estimates. That robust activity is giving policy makers’ room to curb excessive and speculative borrowing. China’s gross domestic product will expand by 6.7 percent from a year ago in the third quarter and 6.6 percent in the fourth quarter, according to the median of ...

Bloomberg The rise of the machines is coming. In technology-proficient Singapore, their integration into the economy could help the domestic growth rate to almost double and significantly lift labor productivity, according to a report by consultancy Accenture. It found that artificial intelligence, once fully adopted, might lift Singapore’s annual growth rate to 5.4 percent in 18 years. That would be ...

If we learned anything from the bitter debate over the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) – which seems doubtful – it is that we cannot discuss health care in a way that is at once compassionate and rational. This is a significant failure, because providing and financing health care has become, over the past half-century, the principal activity of the federal ...

No matter how well-regarded a particular airport happens to be, the slog from curb to cabin is pretty much the same wherever you go. A decades-old paradigm of queues, security screens, snack vendors, and gate-waiting prevails—the only difference is the level of stress. The sky portal of the 2040s, however, is likely to be free of such delights. Many of ...

Washington began taking the threat of gun violence more seriously. The gun dealers in the state will be required to notify law enforcement when someone who is not legally allowed to buy a firearm tries to do so. There were more than 3,000 such people in Washington in 2015. They went to a licensed gun dealer and filled out a ...

Congressional Republicans and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are clashing over a question that has implications far beyond the world of finance: How far can companies go to protect themselves from customer lawsuits? Neither side has got the answer quite right. If you’ve ever signed up for a credit card, you’ve most likely skipped through the boilerplate contracts at the ...