December, 2018

• 4 December

  Nissan directors meet to pick chairman

  

  Bloomberg Nissan Motor Co.’s independent board members were expected to meet on Tuesday to select Carlos Ghosn’s successor as chairman, with their choice to replace the arrested car titan an indicator of the direction the automaker’s alliance with Renault will take. The most likely successors fall on each end of the spectrum: Chief Executive Officer Hiroto Saikawa, who has emerged ...

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• 4 December

  Unilever tops by $1bn in Horlicks bid

  Bloomberg Unilever’s departing Chief Executive Officer Paul Polman, in a major push into India that may be his last deal, agreed to pay about $1 billion more than his closest rival for GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s consumer business in the country, according to people familiar with the matter. The Anglo-Dutch conglomerate agreed to pay $3.8 billion in cash and stock from its ...

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• 4 December

  China announces new punishments for IP theft

  

  Bloomberg Intellectual property theft is one of the main points of contention in China’s dispute with Washington, and just days after President Xi Jinping promised to resolve the US’s “reasonable concerns,” China has announced an array of punishments for IP theft. The government set out a total of 38 different punishments to be applied to IP violations, starting this month. ...

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• 4 December

  Rich Asians are crazy to live in Shanghai

  

  Bloomberg If you’re a high-net-worth individual in Asia into fine dining, jewellery and luxury skin cream, best not to live in Shanghai. The Chinese city overtook Hong Kong as the most expensive for a basket of luxury goods and services on a price-weighted basis, according to Bank Julius Baer & Co.’s annual Wealth Report Asia, which tracks spending by the ...

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• 4 December

  Spotify gets boost as Tencent Music kicks off share sale

  Bloomberg Music-streaming service Spotify Technology SA saw its market value jump $779 million as China’s Tencent Music Entertainment Group kicked off its long-awaited US initial public offering. Spotify owns 8.9 percent of the company, whose largest shareholder is Tencent Holdings Ltd. with 59 percent, according to its IPO filing. Spotify closed up 3.2 percent to $140.68 a share on the ...

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• 4 December

  Euro area strikes deal on joint budget plan, new bond rules

  

  Bloomberg Less than a decade after the financial crisis nearly tore the euro area apart, a long-anticipated push to shore up the single currency finally started taking shape at a meeting of the bloc’s finance ministers, though it will likely underwhelm those calling for tighter integration. The compromise struck on Tuesday after almost 16 hours of talks in Brussels paves ...

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• 4 December

  France, Germany reach compromise on technology tax

  Bloomberg France and Germany agreed to a compromise proposal on how to tax large tech companies that scales back the broad plan initially envisioned by Paris, according to a joint statement issued in the early hours of Tuesday. The new proposal would only tax the European advertising revenue of digital companies at 3 percent, rather than a wider base encompassing ...

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• 4 December

  Apple reassigns marketing staff to boost iPhone sales

  

  Bloomberg Apple Inc is experimenting with iPhone marketing strategies it rarely uses — such as discount promotions via generous device buyback terms — to help goose sales of its flagship product. Company executives moved some marketing staff from other projects to work on bolstering sales of the latest handsets in October, about a month after the iPhone XS went on ...

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• 4 December

  Brexit: Europe drug regulator unplugs from UK

  

  Bloomberg Europe’s medicines watchdog is bracing to make do without one of its most trusted partners. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) stopped assigning work to the UK’s pharmaceutical regulator earlier this year, unsure whether the two organisations will need to stop collaborating after Britain leaves the European Union in March. Preparing for a potential split, the EU body has also ...

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• 4 December

  Microsoft boosts rural broadband efforts

  

  Bloomberg Microsoft Corp, which last year announced a plan to bring broadband to 2 million people in the rural US, is boosting the program to reach another 1 million customers across more states. The Microsoft Airband Initiative will now be in 25 states by this time next year, more than doubling the program’s original reach and adding states including California, ...

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