Bloomberg Canada Pension Plan Investment Board agreed to buy Parkway Inc., a real estate investment trust with properties in the Houston area, for $1.2 billion. The $23.05-a-share cash offer, which consists of $19.05 a share plus a $4 special dividend to be paid prior to the the deal’s completion, is about 13 percent more than Parkway’s closing price on June ...

Bloomberg Bayer AG asked the European Union to approve its $66 billion combination with Monsanto Co., the last of a trio of mega-deals reshaping the global agrochemicals industry. The German chemical giant’s filing kickstarts an initial review with an Aug. 7 deadline. Bayer said it’s still seeking to close the deal “before the end of 2017,” a sign that it’s ...

Bloomberg Puerto Rico’s federal oversight board voted unanimously to allow for the government’s electric utility to file for bankruptcy after rejecting a longstanding debt-restructuring agreement with creditors, threatening to impose steep losses on bondholders and insurance companies. The decision promises to upend years of negotiations by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, known as Prepa, with hedge funds, mutual funds ...

Bloomberg Scandal-hit Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faces one of the biggest tests of his four and a half years in power, after his ruling party lost to an upstart outfit in an election for Tokyo’s assembly. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as projected to win its lowest number of seats ever in the capital in a poll that can be ...

BEIRUT / DAMASCUS / Reuters Three car bombs exploded in Damascus on Sunday, state media said, killing at least seven people in the first suicide bombings in the Syrian capital since extremists attacked in March. A police officer at the scene of one of the blasts put the death toll there at seven with 13 more people wounded. The Syrian ...

DIYARBAKIR / Reuters Kurdish militants shot and killed two officials from the ruling AK Party in southeast Turkey over the weekend, while the Turkish military killed more than a dozen militants in air strikes, state authorities said on Sunday. Orhan Mercan, the AKP’s deputy head in the Lice district of Diyarbakir province, was shot in front of his home on ...

Reuters President Bashar Al Assad has appeared on the Syrian currency for the first time, his portrait printed on a new 2,000-pound banknote that went into circulation on Sunday. Central bank governor Duraid Durgham said the 2,000-pound note was one of several new notes printed years ago but the decision to put it into circulation was delayed “due to the ...

Bloomberg South African President Jacob Zuma lashed out at critics within his African National Congress, saying they’re threatening the ruling party’s hold on power. “Factionalism is a cancer that must be rooted out,” Zuma, 75, said Friday in his opening address to a six-day ANC conference in Johannesburg that will discuss issues ranging from land reform and ownership of the ...

Two Junes ago, when the Supreme Court upheld, 6-3, a challenged provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, vented: “Congress wrote key parts of the Act behind closed doors. Congress passed much of the Act using a complicated budgetary procedure known as ‘reconciliation,’ which limited opportunities for debate and amendment, and bypassed ...

Financial markets are frothier than a millennial’s 3-D latte. Investors are scrambling to throw money at Argentina, Vice Media and George Clooney’s tequila. Only the crypto-currency craze seems to give us comfort there are worse bubbles out there. The latest warning against digital currencies comes from Aberdeen Asset Management’s top venture capitalist, Peter Denious. He blames a feeding frenzy of ...