The Gulf Time Newspaper One of the finest business newspapers in the UAE brought to you by our professional writers and editors.

Bloomberg One of the most improbable ideas from Google’s eccentric co-founders — using high-altitude balloons to provide internet connections — is getting a boost from another unconventional technology mogul. An affiliate of Masayoshi Son’s telecom company SoftBank Corp is investing $125 million in Loon, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet Inc. The SoftBank unit and Loon will share technology and ...

Bloomberg US venture capitalists Sequoia Capital Operations LLC and Andreessen Horowitz are backing a tech startup that says it’s the world’s largest medical drone delivery service, sending 148 types of medicine to areas around Ghana. San Francisco-based Zipline International Inc struck a deal with the West African nation’s government to make on-demand deliveries of vaccines, blood products and other treatments, ...

Bloomberg An Amazon.com Inc team auditing Alexa users’ commands has access to location data and can, in some cases, easily find a customer’s home address, according to five employees familiar with the programme. The team, spread across three continents, transcribes, annotates and analyses a portion of the voice recordings picked up by Alexa. Team members with access to Alexa users’ ...

Bloomberg The birthplace of America’s auto industry and driving culture will soon have one of the world’s first plants making driverless cars. Alphabet Inc’s Waymo LLC has picked an idled American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc facility in Detroit as the site where it will equip vehicles made by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV and Jaguar Land Rover Automotive Plc with ...

Bloomberg Fierce resistance from corporate clients dealt a key blow to Deutsche Bank AG’s deal talks with Commerzbank AG, according to people familiar with the matter. Many Deutsche Bank customers threatened to cut ties with Germany’s largest bank should the deal go through, said the people, asking not to be named because the details haven’t been publicly disclosed. That ultimately ...

Bloomberg The Bank of England (BOE) is widely expected to keep interest rates unchanged when it meets next week, although some analysts see the risk of a hawkish surprise. While all 24 economists surveyed by Bloomberg predict policy makers will maintain rates at 0.75 percent, six see one official voting for an immediate hike. Such a move would be a ...

Bloomberg HSBC Holdings Plc has started a cost review that could lead to job cuts, as Chief Executive Officer John Flint rebuked top managers at a meeting in Hong Kong last month for missing revenue and cost targets, according to people familiar with the matter. About 400 executives attended the global conference where Flint called out leadership for “incompetence” and ...

Bloomberg Colombia left its benchmark interest rate unchanged as policy makers remain wary of derailing the weak, jobless recovery by raising borrowing costs too soon. The seven-member board voted unanimously to leave the policy rate unchanged at 4.25 percent for a twelfth straight month, bank Governor Juan Jose Echavarria said after the meeting. The decision was forecast by all 24 ...

Bloomberg One of the world’s most widely traded virtual currencies faces renewed doubts about its stability, after New York’s top cop accused the coin’s issuer of participating in a cover-up to hide the loss of about $850 million in client and corporate funds. The allegations against Tether and the operator of cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex, announced by the New York attorney ...

Bloomberg Cash-strapped Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA secured a deal to delay deliveries of Boeing Co 737 Max jets, aided by the bargaining power granted by the model’s global grounding after two fatal crashes. Boeing agreed to postpone the handover of 14 Max 8s due in 2020 and 2021, which together with an outline accord to restructure Airbus SE deliveries will ...