Bloomberg Allianz SE, Europe’s biggest insurer, is partnering with Columbia Property Trust Inc. to create a $1.26 billion joint venture for US real estate. The Munich-based insurer contributed an office tower at 114 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan that’s valued at $220 million to the partnership, Allianz’s real estate unit said in a statement. Columbia added University Circle, a $540 million ...

Bloomberg Mexico is no longer the biggest buyer of corn from the US, a sign that trade tensions are pushing American grain toward other markets while its southern neighbor lines up new suppliers. Sales to Mexico through May were $1.04 billion, down 6.7 percent from a year earlier, the US Department of Agriculture said in a monthly update. That contrasts ...

Bloomberg The Trump administration is considering easing steeper fines proposed by Obama-era regulators for automakers that don’t meet tougher fuel economy standards, a move that would give a break largely to luxury brands like Jaguar, BMW and Porsche that have paid the highest penalties in the past. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a regulatory filing it will ...

Bloomberg Manhattan homebuyers found deals they couldn’t refuse in the second quarter, driving up sales of previously owned properties by the most in more than two years. Purchases of resale homes jumped 16 percent from a year earlier to 2,597, according to a report by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Buyer interest was fueled by ...

For this Independence Day, at a moment when the tone of our political life would probably shame our Founders, here are snapshots of some brave American soldiers and civilians I met inside Syria last week who should make us all proud. Let’s start with a bearded sergeant major from Oklahoma. He’s driving an armored SUV down a dusty road toward ...

Executives at South Korea’s carmakers recently blamed strained Chinese relations for a massive sales shortfall in the world’s largest auto market. Foreign affairs only partly explains the story. Just as Bejing’s boycott over Seoul’s plan to host a US missile defense system hurt Korean makeup and toy brands, it also hit the auto industry: in the first half of the ...

With the ouster of Travis Kalanick, its founder and chief executive, Uber has vowed to mend an array of broken and frayed relationships. It can start with cities. It can focus on the sharing of some basic information. Its competitors, including Lyft, can join in this project, too. App-based ride services have changed the urban world, often for the good. ...

By 2050, more than one-quarter of the world’s population will live in Africa — up from about one-sixth today. Even if these projections are slightly off, that fact should serve as a call to action for a continent whose long-term promise is equaled by wide-ranging perils. The numbers come from the latest United Nations report on population trends, which projects ...

When North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile this week — what its boy tyrant called a ‘gift to the American bastards’ — the response from the Trump administration was fairly conventional. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson correctly called it an escalation. He announced America’s intention to bring the matter before the UN Security Council. And he assured, “We will ...

A taxi company that owns no cars. A media titan that creates no content. A retailer with no stores. A couple of years ago, this was the view of Uber, Facebook and Amazon: growing powerhouses even though they consisted of little more than software engineers and data centers (and, in Amazon’s case, a back room with no storefront). Perhaps the ...