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It’s easy to announce an initial public offering in Europe, but far harder to complete it. Don’t be distracted by the handful of decent-sized share issues launched in January. The recent evidence suggests that the target audience for European IPOs is smaller, fussier and harder to reach than it used to be. Some 17 offerings totaling 1.4 billion euros were ...

Germany made post-war history on February 5. In a total shock, one of the country’s 16 state parliaments elected a premier with votes that included members of a hard-right populist party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Worse, one of the AfD leaders in that state, Thuringia, is Bjoern Hoecke, considered to be on the party’s extreme — indeed proto-Fascist — ...

Indian food, when done right, comes in a thali — a metal plate with half a dozen or more little bowls of vegetables, pickles, and so on. The word of the week in India is “thalinomics”: The government’s official survey of the Indian economy, published a few days ago, introduced the word to talk about how food was getting cheaper ...

Bob Dudley leaves BP Plc having almost settled the financial costs of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy in 2010 and overseen a necessary overhaul of safety, and more generally culture, in response to the disaster. Successor Bernard Looney inherits a financially strong company. That only increases the incoming CEO’s responsibility to upgrade BP’s strategy to meet the climate crisis. BP and ...

For Google, a partial voluntary breakup of its advertising business might be preferable to whatever regulators come up with on their own. Whenever people rattle off big tech deals whose regulatory approval was, in hindsight, a mistake, they tend to include the Alphabet Inc. unit’s $3.2 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008. I’ve done it three times in the past ...

Even in its worst days, Cadillac could count on its big, swanky Escalade to deliver profits. It still does, but with Ford Motor Co’s Lincoln Navigator and a handful of European competitors taking a bite out of the large luxury SUV market, General Motors (GM) Co is making a push to turn the fifth-generation Escalade into a high-tech showcase. When ...

Bloomberg Ericsson AB withdrew from the telecommunications industry’s biggest annual event to protect its staff and visitors from the coronavirus outbreak. The Swedish maker of mobile networks said it had pulled out of MWC Barcelona, due to be held on February 24 to February 27. As one of the largest exhibitors, with thousands of visitors in its hall each day, ...

Bloomberg The deadly coronavirus outbreak, which has pushed the Chinese medical community into overdrive, has also prompted the country’s hospitals to more quickly adopt robots as medical assistants. Telepresence bots that allow remote video communication, patient health monitoring and safe delivery of medical goods are growing in number on hospital floors in urban China. They’re now acting as a safe ...

Bloomberg Breeze Airways, the latest offspring of serial airline entrepreneur David Neeleman, will start flying later this year with a fleet that will put his low-cost plans to the test. The new airline is standing by its early pledge to fly where it won’t face competitors and operate on days and times of highest demand, Neeleman said in an interview. ...

Bloomberg Bankrupt carrier Jet Airways India Ltd, once the nation’s biggest by market value, faces fresh warning signs as a deadline to avoid liquidation looms. Creditors will likely be forced into extending a February 17 deadline for the sale of the airline as the shortlisted bidders have yet to form bidding groups, according to people familiar with the matter. Time ...