AFP The European Commission on Tuesday accepted a proposal by iconic Hollywood studio Paramount to end geographic blocking of its films in licence deals with TV channels. The deal is a small step towards the EU’s dream of building a digital single market, in which the European Union’s 500 million people will no longer be blocked from subscribing to ...

  Bloomberg Brazil’s swap rates rose to the highest level in two months after the central bank said it sees no room to cut borrowing costs that are near a decade high as inflation hasn’t been moderating fast enough. Swap rates on the contract maturing January 2018 rose 0.06 percentage point to 12.88 percent at 10:35 a.m. in Sao Paulo. ...

  Miami / AFP Futuristic technologies that promise to improve people’s strength and smarts by editing genes, implanting brain chips or super-charging blood have raised more concern than enthusiasm among Americans, a poll showed on Tuesday. The survey by the Pew Research Center included more than 4,700 US adults, and is considered a nationally representative sample. When asked about gene-editing, ...

  Bloomberg Commerzbank AG dropped the most in a month after Germany’s second-largest bank disclosed an unexpected drop in a key measure of financial strength in the second quarter, hurt by higher operational risks such as legal expenses. The common equity Tier 1 ratio declined to 11.5 percent at the end of June, based on preliminary figures, from 12 percent ...

  BLOOMBERG Barclays Plc trader fired amid the foreign-exchange market manipulation scandal told a London court that a senior bank executive said “life isn’t fair” before firing him. Justin Bull, the bank’s former chief operating officer, mocked Chris Ashton during his April 2015 disciplinary hearing, Ashton said in a witness statement made public Tuesday. During the hearing, Ashton said it ...

  Bloomberg Some of the world’s biggest currency traders are betting that the yen can withstand almost anything Haruhiko Kuroda comes up with on Friday. Insight Investment Management Ltd., a unit of Bank of New York Mellon Corp., is “close to flat” on the yen. JPMorgan Chase & Co. says the currency could surge toward 102 per dollar on Friday, ...

  BLOOMBERG HSBC Global Asset Management is sticking with its bet on Indian sovereign bonds as Asia’s highest yields help drive the strongest foreign demand for rupee debt since October. A pickup in monsoon rains has eased inflation concern and the Reserve Bank of India’s cash injections have improved liquidity, adding to the case for favoring the nation’s debt, according ...

  Bloomberg Itau Unibanco Holding SA, Banco Bradesco SA and Brazil’s other major banks are expected to post their first quarter-over-quarter decline in bad-loan provisions in at least a year when they report results in coming days. The good news will probably be short-lived. “The provision decrease doesn’t mean a credit-quality improvement,” Andre Riva, an analyst at GBM Grupo Bursatil ...

  A month has passed since the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. While that’s nowhere near long enough for all of the economic aftershocks of Brexit to fully manifest, the evidence thus far suggests grounds for optimism. The FTSE 100 Index of the biggest U.K. companies, which dropped 3.15 percent on the day after the referendum, is now ...

  Undoubtedly, Bangalore is still the number one IT/ITeS outsourcing location in the world, as noted by an Economic Times article quoting a 2014 survey of the top 100 IT locations. It’s not difficult to see why — the city not only boasts the highest number of startups, but also has an ecosystem that supports the startup culture. It has ...